Guess Where We Are????!!!?!?!?!??!

THE BAHAMAS!!!!! We FINALLY made it!!!

We made the crossing last Monday and my God, what a crossing it was! We left Biscayne Bay just before 4am and SV Echo Echo and SV Pearl had both already left and so we had two boat ahead of us - that was very reassuring. The conditions on the Gulf were nothing like "they" predicted. The forecast was for light winds out of the north changing to east winds around 1-2am. By 5am we were getting hammered by 16-17 knot winds from the north, and there is no way the period to height ratio was 1.5, more like 12 foot waves coming every 3 seconds - you know, the conditions they say not to cross the Gulf in. We motor sailed to cross as fast as we could and also to stabilize the rocking a little. Part way across the Gulf the wind instantly changed to the east - it was like hitting a wall! The sail back winded and the bow lurched under water and the boat felt like it stopped - we fought with the headsail to get it in and kept motoring. We were in constant contact with the other boats out there - all morning you could hear boats radioing each other and updating each other on the conditions where they were - I think everyone took comfort in hearing each other and knowing you weren't alone out there! We got pummelled the entire way - the boat was being pushed left and right and all you could see in the darkness was walls of water on either side of the boat, all you could hear was "glug, glug, glug" as all the water smashing on deck was draining out of the scuppers. Honestly I had a moment where I felt quite anxious and James asked me if I wanted to turn back. We radioed Pearl and they told us the conditions were getting a little better so we pressed on. We both confessed that if there weren't two boats ahead of us we would have turned back. There were boats behind us radioing us to see what the conditions were like because they weren't sure if they wanted to keep going. We all said we were glad it was dark so that we couldn't see how big the waves were! SV Pearl has done the crossing many times and they said they had never experienced anything like this - that this was by far the worst crossing they could imagine. I still can't believe the only damage we sustained was broken eggs in the fridge and split shampoo in the bathroom, especially since all we could hear was banging and crashing! I expected broken dishes everywhere.

Drawers everywhere after the crossing!

I experienced true sea sickness and now I understand what all the fuss is about! It was so bad I briefly thought "well if a wave sweeps me off at least this awful feeling will be gone!". It started with a headache and a dizzy lightheaded feeling - I put on a sea sick patch immediately but I was too late. I vomited for five hours! It was horrid.  I'm not sure if I had some strange paradoxical effect from the sea sick patch but my hands and feet went completely numb and I had black patches in my vision - I was a mess, it was a combo of a migraine and gastroenteritis. In my disasterous state and the violent state of the seas James obviously felt it was not safe to leave me on deck by myself, however after a couple strong cups of coffee he really needed to pee. James turned to me apologetically and said "I'm sorry but is it okay if I pee in a bucket?", to which I responded "I don't care about anything right now". So James peed in a bucket on deck and then tried to throw it overboard - I'll let you guess how well that went. I'm not sure what caused my dire state but the week before I was convinced I had a very minor concussion: I had slipped on some spilt sugar at the grocery store and a can of chickpeas fell off the top shelf and landed directly on my head (what is with tinned beans and this trip!?!). I had been experiencing many symptoms of a minor concussion and assume that played a part in the extreme sea sickness I experienced!

After ten hours we finally made it to Bimini and I started feeling better! We anchored off the beach there and got a little sleep in the very rolly waves. The next morning we set off across the Bahamas Banks toward the Berry Islands - about 75 nautical miles - so we planned to leisurely do it over two days. This would involve anchoring on the Bahamas Bank, which is shallow but has no wind protection of any kind - you are basically out in the middle of the sea. We started sailing at about 8:30am - it was a beautiful sunny day with light winds - we were so excited to be sailing and not motoring! Around 1pm the winds changed direction and were coming from exactly the direction we wanted to go so we knew we would never make it under sail alone so we turned the engine back on. The winds slowly picked up through the late afternoon and evening and we decided we couldn't anchor because it was far too rough.  We decided it was better to continue on and arrive around 1am - that's not exactly how it went down. The wind kept picking up and eventually was hitting us right on the nose at 30knots - the waves picked up and the current was against us. The experience was different from the Gulf Stream crossing in that during the Gulf crossing the boat was rolling side to side, and during the Banks crossing the boat was pitching bow to stern: the pulpit honestly spent more time under water than our rudder! The waves kept lifting us up and the boat just repeatedly crashed down over and over and over again. Every time we checked we were still ten hours away. We took turns napping in the cockpit which is difficult when it sounds like a wrecking ball is bashing into the front of the boat! For a while our speed was a pathetic 0.5knots and we thought we would never get there. To make matters worse, our engine light and buzzer kept going off telling us our engine was overheating so we had to keep easing off on the throttle. We were both so grateful the engine didn't die on us.  It took a whole TWENTY THREE hours for us to reach a place to anchor.
We dropped anchor at 7:30am the next day and both tried to sleep a little before navigating the shallow and narrow channel into Great Harbour Cay so we could clear customs. A few hours later we made our way through the channel and over to the marina - where we were met by tons of Canadians who couldn't believe we sailed all the way there in that weather. All day people came over to the boat to hear the story! You have to go to the marina to clear customs but after the hellish three days we had, we decided to splurge and spend the night at the marina - we had a blissful 12hour night sleep where the boat didn't rock at all.

In the end we were glad we kept moving - we spoke to Echo Echo the next day and they said they thought they were going to loose their boat at one point! When they were trying to navigate out of the Bimini channel - the current and waves were so strong that their boat was swept up and it's so shallow that they were crashing onto the ground! They said their boat was nearly swept into a reef. They along with some other boats have been stuck in Bimini waiting for the winds to die down.

We definitely feel one hell of a sense of accomplishment! I mean when we bought the boat I didn't even know how to flush the toilet and now I successfully navigated us across the Banks at night (James is a great teacher)!

More postings to come about our time in the Bahamas so far but we are anchored at a deserted Island in the Berry's and it is calling our name!

Our boat proudly flying the Bahamas Courtesy Flag