After more of a long nap than a night's sleep we were up in the dark, making final preparations for departure. We got all the instruments up and running, started the engine, released the mooring, and we were off about 4a. We hadn't done much close quarters maneuvering in the dark since we left the gulf, but we were pretty used to the neighborhood by now. Even though we had gone under the 17th St bridge (55 foot clearance closed) on our way up, I was still a bit puckered going back under it again, this time in the dark. We supposedly clear by a couple feet.
We slipped beneath the bridge without a whisper, turned left, and we were looking at the ocean. Well actually it was dark, so we didn't see much other than nav lights. The ocean still had a little swell going, but it was supposed to keep smoothing out as the day went on. The gulfstream was about about 18 miles offshore so we set our sights on West End directly.
We had this whole plan to go south to Miami, or even farther, then cross over to Bimini, mostly because that is what I'd done before with John K. Since we were no longer trying to coordinate with anyone else's schedule we decided to finally let that go. All the guide books said do the Abacos first in the Bahamas, so we decided to ditch everything else entirely. It mostly worked out.
West End is much easier to hit when leaving from Ft. Lauderdale. It's the west end (go figure) of the northernmost banks in the Bahamas, and it's maybe 30 miles north of FtL, which makes the 3 mph north gulfstream work for you instead of against. It wasn't much after 5a when it seemed like the sun was starting to come up. With no other lights around you get a lot of warning. The swell settled down to a very calm 1 to 2 foot, with the occasional 3 or even 4 footer rolling through. Pretty nice for fair weather boaters like us.
About dawn the water seemed to warm up a little, and the boat speed over ground starting ramping up with no change in heading or engine rpms. We were in the gulfstream. We altered our heading closer to due east to get across the stream without overshooting West End. It was about 30 miles wide here, so we had maybe six hours of free ride north courtesy of the gulfstream. Once we were mostly out of the stream effects we pointed directly at West End again for our final approach.
We saw land maybe six or eight miles out, just some scrubby trees sticking up from a low, flat island. But the water was amazing. You could see things on the bottom like there was maybe a foot of water rather than 15 or 20 below us. I read somewhere to think of the banks like a giant dinner plate, with the edge ramping up slightly - but broken in spots, so some of the edge was lower than surrounding sections. The center of plate is just 15 feet below the surface of the water, with the edges less that that. As a result, the three-foot tide flowing over this giant plate, then six hours later off again, flushes a tremendous amount of water through the banks, making the water some of the clearest in the world.
We had some difficult spotting the cut into the marina, but some sportfishers with their giant wakes pointed the way. Heather guided us right into our slip. With no drama at all, we were in the Bahamas on our own boat. We raised our yellow quarantine flag and prepared to clear in. I gathered up our paperwork and passports and headed over to the government offices. After very little hassle (no guns or pets helped) we were admitted into the Bahamas. We pulled down our quarantine flag and raised one for the Bahamas per protocol.
We got a ride from the marina to the BTC office to try and get new sim cards for our phones and iPad. While they were open (we discovered this was unusual) they had been out of product for weeks (not unusual at all). Our phones were going to be at the mercy of AT&T for a while here. We grabbed some fish and chips on the way back and called it a day. The pic below is of our boat in the West End marina, Bahamian flag flying low for some reason.
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