We had a lovely pizza dinner with our friends from Bobin last night, and prepared to clear out on Sunday morning. I woke up, finished doing click2clear, and figured out how to pay for our cruising permit. Those of you that have done this before know it’s not the simplest thing out there!
Our route has us cruising down the coast of Florida close to Fort Lauderdale before turning into the Gulf Stream. That led us past Mar-a-Lago and its frequent reminders on VHF about the security zone around Mar-a-Lago.
As our first East to west Gulf Stream crossing, we weren’t sure exactly what to expect. Chris has crossed west to east when bringing Two Fish up to the Chesapeake. We picked the route where we went south first so we could not go head first into the stream and be fighting the current so much. Unfortunately, we STILL had to head into the current to maintain our trajectory to our selected waypoint. Oh well, the best laid plans and all. Chris took the night shift with the Gulf Stream, and my shift started in the middle of a traffic jam!
Yes, a traffic jam of cruise ships at 12:30am. We try to maintain several (4-5) nautical miles between ships but it was impossible here. I did call out to the Disney Dream and speak to their captain for a sec about their course. Yay for some Disney magic!
We arrived at Great Harbor Cay Marina about 2pm. Woohoo! We checked in with customs and immigration and were granted a 90 day stay (less than the 120 days we had asked for – it’s a thing this year in the Bahamas. This just means our cruising here will be 90 days or less. An extension costs $200 per person, and you aren’t guaranteed a set number of days – it could be as little as 30. We have a year long cruising permit but oh well.) Wren was delighted that there were other kids here to play with. Mom and Dad were delighted with a place to sleep soundly.
We moved to an anchorage at Bullock’s Harbor for the next night. Our buddy boat anchored out, too. The Two Fish crew took Chicken Tender (our dinghy) to shore for beach and dog walking. It was kinda icky at low tide. It was terribly squishy, and sometime you’d sink to mid calf. We decided this was a beach we wouldn’t choose to repeat, at least at low tide.
The next day had us motorsailing to Market Fish Cay / Soldier Cay. We had hoped to make it one island further down, but decided to cut it short for daylight hours. This was a great stopover! Awesome beach where we could let Lily off leash to run. Wren found loads of cool finds: shells, shells, shells, and sea fans (all found on land, none pulled from the ocean). We saw a turtle, too! None of the sharks we have read about, though.
The next morning we moved further south a bit. This anchorage is Little Harbour Cay, and it’s been nice. 10 of us are packed in here hoping for some wind protection. Gusts were over 32 knots one night.
We took the dinghy to Hoffman Cay for a great hike to a blue hole. Surprise! The water is salty! Wren jumped from the cliff three times, and swam all around.
After lunch at the blue hole, we took the dinghy half way back and stopped at the lovely Comfort Cove Yacht Club beach for more exploring and play.
