Our first Bahama anchorage!

 We  anchored  Monday, March 6, at Grand Harbor in the Berry Islands.  We were on the eastern side of the island and we were rewarded with a white sand bottom, and water that was out of the world blue.

This is the water in a 9 ft. deep anchorage.

  

David and I had a great night sleep at anchorage, but our buddy boat dragged anchor twice, which means their boat was drifting around and so at about 6 am, they called over the VHF to say they wanted to move to the lee side of the Berry Islands so we had more protection from the wind.  We motored around the top of the Berry's past Little and Big Stirrup Cay.

Our third buddy boat was waiting for us on the east side of the Berry Islands at Bullocks Bay.  He had made the crossing a couple of days before us.  He has 8 seasons of experience in the Bahamas and is much more sure of himself.  His name is Art.  He is married to Linda and they have Sophie the wonder dog that travels all over with them.  Their boat is Saltshaker. This is Art and Sophie coming to visit us with a piece of tubing that David hoped would fix a leak.

We were so grateful for his wisdom, experience and advice.  Our other buddy boat was Dream Again.  She is captained by Tim and Sandy.  They have been sailing for several years but only this year they committed to living aboard.  It was their first season in the Bahamas too, so sometimes it was the blind leading the blind, when Art would go ahead to a new destination.  One night we all went on to the island and had dinner at a local restaurant called Hammerhead.  I had some of the best bbq wings I've ever eaten.

Tim and Sandy have a youtube channel if you want to check out what they are up to. https://www.youtube.com/@dreamagainsailing  

One of the days we were anchored off of Bullocks Bay we used our dingy to go onto the island and shop for some food.  We were lucky to find an avocado, some eggs, a head of cabbage and a green pepper. We passed on buying a box of cookies because they cost $10.  Most of the islands completely depend on supplies delivered by boat.  It made us more grateful for the huge selection of food available at home.

Our neighbors at anchorage.
 

The islands don't support much fresh fruit or vegetable growth, but we have found chickens on every island we have been on. We've also seen peacocks on the islands, although I'm not sure why. The peacocks crow along with the roosters, even in the middle of the night.  More unanswered questions.

We were at anchorage from Monday, March 6 until Thursday, March 9th.  You may wonder what we do at anchorage.

We clean off in the salty water.

We try to fix things like our macerator.

We bake cookies because our solar panels are making lots of electricity and we don't need much to run the boat.

We do laundry and hang from the underside of our bimini to dry out.
David went out one day to see a wrecked DC3 airplane.  There is an old airstrip on the island and the story is the plane kept circling to wait permission to land until it ran out of fuel and crashed beside the island. 

Most of our days at anchorage were good weather although the winds were usually between 10 and 20 mph.  Occasionally, we had a little rain.

 There was a bigger storm predicted so we next headed south to Chub Cay which is the southernmost tip of the Berry Islands.  We had a slip reserved at the marina there to ride out the storm.

Are we there yet?

 Something those Youtube videos don't tell you about when it comes to sailing is that the wind doesn't always cooperate and the diesel motors on sailboats are NOT meant for speed.  Hence the name of this post.

  We had experienced winds of 20-30 mph for several days and had to stay in a marina for protection.  As several people with much bigger sport fishing boats told us, "The sea is confused out there" and after trying to take fisherman out, even they returned to the marina.  We did hit the jackpot on Saturday night, because one of the local men who fishes came back with fresh lobsters and offered us some.  Yum!  Hopefully we will be able to catch some of our own.  They are in season here until March 31.

There was a beach right by our marina and we explored it a bit while waiting for the wind to change.

Oops it's a new go pro and I need to get my finger out of the way, but this picture shows you how much wind we had going.

And thanks to Starlink, David was able to get a little bit of work done too.

On Sunday, March 5 the winds calmed and we decided to make the 25 mile trip from Old Bahama Bay Marina at the north western tip of Grand Bahama island to Freeport.  We wanted to sail but the winds were directly from the south and that is the direction we needed to go, so we motored at about 5 mph.

We had hoped to anchor off the south coast of Grand Bahama, but the shore is a steep drop off and is rocky so we had to spend a night in Freeport Grand Bahama Yacht club and Marina. This was to be the jumping off point for another open ocean crossing. 

We left at 4 am knowing it would take about 12 hours to cross the 55 miles.  We had head winds of 16 mph and tried to sail but angle of the wind and the swell of the ocean 3-4 ft. kept our sails from being very effective so back we went to the motor.

On our trip we saw funnel clouds, a rainstorm,

a gorgeous sunrise,

Lots of container ships

And a fun pod of dolphins!

After 11 hours of sailing we finally saw something stationary on our radar.  It turned out to be two cruise ships that were docked on Big Stirrup Cay and Little Stirrup Cay which are now privately owned by Royal Caribbean cruise lines and Norwegian Cruise lines.  They drop their passengers there for a day of water parks, eating and beach time.  We were just happy to see that we had arrived at the Berry Islands.  We will be here for several days and are looking forward to more fun encounters.

Crossing from Florida to the Bahamas

 Exciting? Fun? Terrifying?  Yep all of the above.  We made the crossing on Wed. March 1.  We knew we had to travel about 55 miles so we would need 12 hours to make the journey using both our diesel engine which is surprisingly efficient and hopefully sails.  The forecast said we would have steady winds from the southwest which would be ideal, but forecasts as everyone who lives in Idaho knows are educated guesses and the wind gods just laughed at that forecast.  We didn't want to arrive at anchorage after dark since we would be in unfamiliar territory so we left Fort Pierce at 4:30 am.  Here is what is looked like.

We followed our buddy boat out of the channel making sure to stay within the channel so the boats wouldn't ground.  We also were on the lookout for other boats to avoid hitting them, but with little moon it was DARK!

When we got out to the ocean and looked back this is what we could see.  We sailed in the complete darkness using our instruments for 2.5 hours and I was never so happy to see the sun come up.  Our buddy boat was going to be navigator but his instruments malfunctioned and David took the lead with an app on his phone that he got for free.  The app had only let him set one course which was the one we needed. (We have now purchased the entire app.  It's called Aqua Map.)

This was the Raymarine Chart plotter we stared at to see where we were in relation to the land.

 And this was our depth reader.  It stopped reading at 424 ft. deep. I've since learned the water goes as deep as 6000 ft.Just when I was getting really nervous, the sun peaked over the horizon.   

Sunrise over the ocean!  These 3 pictures were taken in under 1 minute.

\We had been motoring in the dark, but decided to put up the sails with the sun.

 

Our buddy boat following us.

We sailed for over 6 hours without land in sight in any direction.

  We saw another boat heading in basically the same direction as we were, but it was a motor boat.  We hailed him on the VHF radio and asked where he was going.  He said West End!  Hallelujah!  He was much faster than us, but at least we knew we were heading in the right direction.

After 10 hours of sailing we saw land and it was our intended target!

This little guy must have been really tired because he was 4+ miles offshore when he hitched a ride with us.  

After we spotted land and could breathe a sigh of relief, we could enjoy more of the beauty of the Bahamas.

We've been resting in a marina since yesterday and we slept like logs after little sleep on Tuesday night and the long crossing.  We aren't sure yet if we will go north to the Abacos islands or head south to Freeport and then on the Berry Islands.  Stay tuned.