Finally, crossing to the Bahamas!

-
Day 1
We are ready. We sailed from Key Largo to Pumpkin Key right before the sun goes down, and are now anchored close to the Key for protection. The wind is still strong from the East, at around 15 knts. Two other boats will be doing the crossing to the Bahamas. On the 31st, I wake up at 4h am, too excited to go back to bed. We all agreed to leave at first light. That happens to be around 7h, so I wait. Finally, 7h arrives so we start the engine and leave our anchorage. A bunch of dolphins are excited for us, jumping high in the air to wave us good bye. From Angelfish creek, we motor through the reef. The conditions are not ideal, with waves coming from the East. It rocks a lot, but we make it trough. After about 2 hours out there, our engine starts acting up!! Weird helicopter sound, not going over 2200 rpm. F***! We make the decision to turn around and sail back to Florida. What a disappointment!! We are not sure what went wrong... Once back to Angelfish creek, we anchor and check everything. Oil, diesel, impeller, water pump. When Sam dives to look underneath, he sees that the propeller had a lot of seaweed in it. 😕 That’s probably what stopped the engine from running properly. So now, we wait another night...


Day 2
We seem to be alone to go out today, even though the forecast looks better. We wake up at 5h am and make coffee. Everything has to start with coffee!! No dolphin this morning, so maybe that’s a good sign!! Leaving Angelfish creek, the sea is like a lake. Calm and beautiful. Way better than yesterday!! Everything happens for a reason!



We set up the sails and enjoy the 10-15 knts S winds with the engine running at low speed. This feels great!!!

After 8 hours at sea, the first glance of land is exciting. We start by seeing just shades of green at the horizon. When we get closer, and we finally see the different shades of blue, we are ecstatic!! It is just beautiful!!! Thank you life!


We docked at Blue Water Marina to clear customs and ended up spending the night here. Got a nice bull sharks show at the dock. :) Welcome to the Bahamas!!!!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Our final days in the Bahamas...

-
Image
I can’t believe I’m already writing this post. A month and a half has gone by since we crossed the Gulf Stream, landed in Bimini and saw the crystal clear blue water of this piece of paradise...  So, after letting Virginie and Arnaud in Nassau, we set sails for the Berry Islands, a chain of islands that we explored on our way to the Exumas, but still had a lot of hidden gems to reveal. On our way there, as some of you might already know, I finally got to realize a dream of mine to catch my own mahi mahi! With MY line in the water, and MY muscles to take it out. It was so exciting, I hadn’t yelled of joy and adrenaline that much in a long time! Anyway, it made it the most delicious fish I had in my entire life. So now I’m ready for a ahi. 😜  We ended up at Frozen Cay for a night, to give me some time to clean up the fish and cook it. 😁 The next morning, we went to check out Bonds Cay, thinking that it might be exciting, but it ended up being just ok. So we chilled on the boa
Read more

Arrival

-
Image
We made it!! First day of driving was way too long for what it was, mostly because there was a huge line to cross the boarder and just to make it worst, it was something like 95F in the car, no AC. Thank you Grand-maman Ginette for the toy fans!!! They saved all of our lives.  Once on US soil, we had to go through "interrogation "  because our story was kinda unusual I guess. 😉 Obviously they believed it because we made to the other side!! Yesterday, the kids got to see the boat for the first time. That was exciting, even for us. We were super happy when Rolianne was launched in the water. AND when the engine started smoothly to get to our slip. 😁 We’re home!!!! We spent the rest of the day sorting things out and finalizing the little modifications that were still to be done on the boat. Same thing for this morning.  Fun fact: On both days, we  had to drop everything we were doing to head to the beach, because it’s freaking hot down here!!! 
Read more

First night out for Rolianne!

-
Image
Finally! We made it outside Casa Rio marina with Rolianne! It took a little while for us to get her ready, but yesterday we took her out of her slip for the first time. It was not totally gracious (we had a hard time passing by the two wooden poles defining our spot with the wind) but once out there, it was a lot of fun to be in the Bay! After a little ride, we anchored in a quiet part of Rhode river, had a pizza on the BBQ and spent the night. It was awesome and refreshing!!
Read more