Bahamas!

 03/15/2018 - That's it! We stuff the boat with food, water, diesel, a windsurf board and we go! Marc and Fred’s beautiful Hunter 44 sailing vessel is named...Champagne!

It's going to be a 2 day journey before we arrive at West End, Grand Bahama.

So, the first day we head south on the IntraCoastal Waterway (ICW) from Vero Beach Marina. It's roughly 10 hours moving at 6-7 knots. We pass many bridges, some are high enough for our mast (61ft), others are bascule bridges. We also make a diesel stop during which Marc demonstrates his utmost maneuvering skills in the very cramped space.

We are impressed by some of the properties along the way. Huge mansions with huge private docks holding huge motorboats.

It's a billionaires’ world!

Narrow channels between mangroves and frequent dolphins fishing around make for a great first day overall.

We arrive at our anchoring, West Palm Beach inlet, with plenty of time for our first “apéritif” (French style Happy Hour) and dinner on the boat. This is our sea entrance for tomorrow.

When we drop our anchor, we marvel at the fact that we can perfectly see it through the clear water 10-15 ft below! Marc and Fred were not used to this at the Chesapeake Bay where they sailed before!

We're treated to a great first sunset too.

03/16/2018 - Early morning we just make a few hundred yards and enter the ocean after crossing the inlet. Everything changes: the seas are “calm” but the Gulfstream still makes big sideway rolling waves that make our boat roll very uncomfortably. Muriel and I get sea sick quickly and stay out of the cabin pretty much for the rest of the day.

No throwing up but close!

Only the sight of dwarf sperm whales will get us out of our lethargy.

Thankfully, once we've crossed the powerful Gulfstream, the seas become tamer after 5 hours of sailing. We arrive at West End, our entry port to the Bahamas, after a total of 8 hours crossing with plenty of time to enjoy the late afternoon.

We are instantly mesmerized by the clear turquoise water and the colored fish and turtles we can see through.

We tie up for the customs check and set our anchor just outside the marina docks for the night.

Joao is the first to get to the water, there's a huge current and he ties himself to a rope before swimming out.

How many sunsets like this are we going to get? 

03/17/2018 - Again we start early in the morning: we are heading on a shortcut that needs to be taken seriously, a narrow channel over several miles on this northern Bahamas bank just deep enough for our ship with no buoys at all to mark it. We take advantage of the high tide to get a few extra feet of depth and follow a GPS path.

There's a “parade” of boats following each other and we catch some interesting conversations between them; we're not the only “first timers” here. The leader announces that indeed he has been on this channel before, but he sank his ship!!!

After the channel we get winds at 10 knots and stop the diesel engine for the first time since we left Vero Beach. We’re sailing!

Water is incredible, like a pool (no, these aren't Muriel's legs after a week in the Florida swamps! And Joao resists pedicures ).

We head to the Ábaco Islands and get another good full day of sailing. Everybody finds something to do: Jeremy reads, Marc is our Captain, Frédérique prepares our anchoring options, Muriel stretches and Joao writes the blog! 

03/22/2018

We keep traveling east and start using the sails more often. We even use the beautiful balloon shaped spinnaker.

We set foot on the ground at tiny Fox Town on Little Abacos.

Joao gets its first windsurfing rides.

We find a local restaurant serving the local conch delicacy and the owner even shuttles all of us to and from our boat that is anchored in the bay. It was a nice evening with a beautiful sunset again!

Crab Cay more to the east is our next stop. We sail less that day and spent more time on the beach. It's windy so Joao tries himself again at windsurf.

Amazing colors!

While the North East of the US suffers from cold front hits and snowstorms one after another, the south east and hence the Bahamas get some nasty side effects also. Fronts and high winds are coming our way.

So after Crab Cay we have to adapt our course to find shelter from the strong winds that are forecasted and get a very “exciting” sailing day (Muriel's prefered qualifier is “scary”) where the winds keep picking up (gusts close to 30 knots from our anemometer reading).

Muriel did not like at all this active sailing day. The boat was banking way too much for her liking!

There’s very few suitable shelters and we have not made early enough plans to secure one. So we have to race the other boats to make sure we get a spot at the only developed Cay we stand a chance to reach before the worst of  the storm arrives. We breathe a sigh of relief when we finally make it to Green Turtle Cay but aren't done with challenges yet! Many sailboats have already taken shelter here and we're facing difficulties finding a suitable anchorage. After 2 attempts in one cove and one very stressful channel passage at low tide to a second cove, we finally find a great dock that allows us to walk to land easily. On the very narrow entry channel at low tide we got very close to getting stuck with the keel and had our most stressful moment fighting waves, winds and insufficient depth clearance.

That day, our traditional Happy Hour turns into a joyful celebration of our arrival in a little paradise, having overcome many challenges to get there. Toasts for Champagne!

Green Turtle Cay enchants us: gorgeous beaches of white sand and transparent emerald water line with coconut trees offering great snorkeling, a beautiful old town (New Plymouth, founded in the mid 1700s), colorful houses and nice restaurant and cafes. Our favorite beach is the pristine Coco Bay with its docile turtles and good winds for Joao's windsurf!

People, locals as well as the many visitors from all over the world, are extremely friendly too. Golf carts are used to drive around the island and when we got faced with a shortage of carts to rent we just hitch-hiked!

Joao even found a friendly retiree who picked him up with all his windsurfing gear! That made for quite a sensational ride!

Overall a great stay at Green Turtle Cay!

3/24/2018

We have to stay one extra night and day at Green Turtle Cay, the winds are still too strong from the North and our heading is North. So instead of motoring up wind, we decide to wait. We love this place and are very comfortably docked so there's no rush.

Next morning we leave when the tide is high enough for the channel. The North winds are still strong though, gusts at 20 knots! It is much colder also. We're wearing jackets!

We sail upwind most of the day, tacking several times. By 2pm we give up the sailing and finish our day motoring to Alan’s Pensacola Cay.

Another beautiful wild island with some humoristic decorations from the various passerbys: a pizza sign, Walmart parking sign, free beer sign and a beat up shack with old books and a Borat DVD !! But there's obviously absolutely nothing on this island. 

There's also a tree creatively decorated with garbage from the sea.

03/25/2018

Next day we sail to the acclaimed “most beautiful cay in the Bahamas”: Double Breasted Cay. We sail all the way and cross these strange “light blue milky” waters, that suddenly contrast with darker blue waters.

They always cause us a bit of stress as we fear for our depth clearance on those overall shallow bank waters not always mapped with all corals, moving bottom sands and rocks.

The anchoring is the other stressful moment through this trip as our anchor system is not working properly. It requires 4 people to operate: Marc maneuvering both the boat engine and direction in the back, Fred operating the anchor motor in the front with Joao muscling the heavy metal up when needed to help the motor and Muriel in the cabin switching back on the fuse when it pops out. Intense! especially with the additional risk of maneuvering over low depths.

But the challenge of anchoring  in remote wild cays is always worth it and Double Breasted Cay is well worth its reputation. It's indeed a very beautiful cay. But Joao’s hat is even prettier! 

We double up the pictures so much it is uniquely scenic! So here you go again for a pic without our tourist pollution 

We also spot a couple of nurse sharks on the shallow waters. They stay very close to our feet!

We manage to snorkel  some with Jeremy but the water has got cold these past few days with the north winds, so we don't stay long in the water.

Jeremy continues to avoid the parents’ camera by the way, like most teenagers who only populate their own Instagrams and other Facebooks with teen-style curated selfies. He sleeps, eats (a lot, like all his fellow teenage buddies, to Marc and Fred's amazement) and reads mostly.

We get back to the sailboat for the Happy Hour (apéritif !!). And Jeremy shows us how to take a selfie!  Now he is on a picture, of his own choosing though!

Next 2 pictures Frédérique and Muriel make a coordinated attack to keep Jeremy's head up for a picture while he's washing dishes:

Not very successful 

Our evenings now have another new activity: playing cards the 5 of us. We play the game “Ass Hole” ! It translates exactly the same way in French: trou du cul ! 

3/26/2018

After Double Breasted Cay we sail to and anchor at Mangrove Cay. Good winds again! And Muriel is getting comfortable with the boat at sailing angles in excess of 20 degrees so we can have fun!

By the way, except for the initial crossing from Florida through the Gulfstream, we have not felt seasick at all and have slept very comfortably in even rolling waters.

Jeremy finally submits to be pictured and what a picture ain't it!

We'll! Next one is his revenge, monkey grin!

The day after we sail back to West End, the tip of the Bahamas closest to Florida where we started our Bahamian tour.

Another high wind event is forecasted, after 2pm, and we hurry up to get shelter at West End. We start early with no wind and clear waters.

But of course the wind picks up much earlier than forecasted! We get 25 knots gusts downwind and big wave rolls. Combined with some shallow bank crossing, the tension sometimes is high.

We're much relieved when we arrive at West End and dock at the luxury Marina.

Joao immediately rigs his windsurf. Yesssss!

Winds get really strong and we're stranded there until the weather gives us a break to cross the treacherous Gulfstream back to Floride. There are several other sailboats awaiting for better conditions.

We enjoy the docking area and the resort amenities that go with it.

But we start worrying about our return to Florida: the wind blows from the North and the Gulfstream crossing will be too perilous for the next few days.

3/27/2018

As expected the winds didn’t stop all night long. We're happy to be in the protected waters of West End Marina. Joao is particularly happy to have as much windsurfing as he wants but we can't cross the Gulfstream today. And next day seas will still be rough.

We’re Tuesday, March 27, stuck in the Bahamas (I know there's worse places to be stuck) and we need to return our car by Saturday 31st in Connecticut, 1300 miles north of Vero Beach, dang!

Marc and Frédérique rightfully don't feel comfortable making the crossing the next day,  Wednesday 28, they prefer to wait for better conditions, which we totally understand! And another cold front is forecasted for Thursday and Friday, making the next possible crossing Saturday 31, too late to be in Connecticut the same day ! Just the crossing takes 8-10 hrs by the way.

Meanwhile we have met a French-German couple, Francoise and Dirk (F&D), and we keep talking as we are all waiting to make the crossing. For them crossing on Wednesday isn't a big deal. They are very experienced and not worried at all by the big swells forecasted. Well,  you probably guess at this point what happens next! yes we got the nerve to ask them if they would take “boating hitchhikers”. And after some thoughts, explanations and passport checks they say yes! Yesssss!

So the next morning we said goodbye to our good friends Marc and Frédérique (they had no constraint for a return by the way and could stay as long as they wanted! Lucky them!) and took off with F&D. Yeah it was the biggest seas we had ever experienced on a sailboat. Muriel and I didn't dare to go into the cabin much more than to go for a rushed pee and even Jeremy got sick (who had shown no signs of seasickness so far).

By contrast to us F&D were as relaxed and comfortable as if they were on a Central Park pond!! Even when the main sail rope broke right at the beginning!! That rope is the one getting the most tension in any sailboat, imagine a fat climbing rope so tight that you can play a note when you poke it, way more tension than with a slackline. So the rope just totally exploded with a loud sound sending bits of its core to the air. Bang! In the utmost calm way one can imagine, Dirk made a knot with some help from Francoise and we were quickly back on track!

F&D are very experienced sailors but mostly they're great people with such an amazing life story that we need to write a bit more about it.

Imagine: she's French, he's German, and it's 1957. Resentment between the 2 countries from WWII is still very high as you can imagine, but against all odds they marry, requiring special authorization from the French government to do so! And now, at roughly 80 years old each they're still sailing the world! They have sailed around our planet on a 10 year trip back in the 90s-00s with a steel boat (for protection against collisions with whales which are more frequent than we would think!!). And they now sail this Swedish designed fiberglass and wood boat which requires less maintenance.

They had never taken boat hitchhikers by the way so we feel very privileged. And even though Francoise moves around the boats on huge swells like a 20 years old gymnast they have decided to make this their last sea crossing. They're shipping their boat in the next few weeks from Florida back to Europe where they have a home and grandchildren. Joao is very happy, to give them his windsurfing gear as he was looking for someone to donate it to, it looks like one of their grandchildren wants to learn to windsurf.

So that's it! Our 7-week wandering adventures in the South are over. Beyond the touristic sightseeings and crazy wilderness escapes, the most precious moments were spent with our old friends and the many wonderful people we met on the way, not all being quoted in our blogs.

Back home for a few days before we head to our next adventures on April 10th, the Pacific Crest Trail.

Travelling, like life, is a journey, not a destination to be enjoyed every step of the way. So remember to make time for your kind of fun stuff!

We hope you all enjoyed our blogs so far because we will resume once we're on the PCT (April) !