Day 5, still Green Turtle Cay

The rain storms just keep coming. Last night when we anchored we put up both of our "sun shades". We never expected they would become rain tents. Our boat leaks. We have now discovered that our boat leaks A LOT. My bunk was soaking wet from the waist down to my toes. So, I made up my my bed on the dinette. It was wet too but it was the drier of the 2. I was woken up quite a few times in the night, by slapping halyards, tiller handle banging, Mark snoring and just the weather. Though we had everything secured down they still found a way to make noise.  So, I put in my ear plugs, Mark came over and cuddled with me, and I went back to sleep.
Morning came with new hopes and excitement for the day. The weather report predicts 90% chance of rain and 70% tomorrow. Oh boy did the skies ever open up. Rain is still drenching us inside the boat. We are not going anywhere sailing for the day so we prepared a bag with everything in zip loc bags (I bought XL ones for our computers) and bed sheets in a plastic bag to put into the dryer. We will wait for the rain to slow then we will head for shore and get some things done there while we wait. 
We went to the library which was an old building with I am sure a lot of history. In the one wall I see what once was possibly a fire oven. A bakery or a blacksmith? The place has 3 small rooms. You can check out books for 2 weeks or exchange 1 for 1 paperback books. Ours are so water logged I doubt they would accept ours on trade. They also had internet but it was secured and the volunteer who worked there left and we had no way to sign on. The hours of all of the businesses here are on "island time" , 10 till ???. I wish that my work schedule was like that. And if it rains they just close and go home.
We went and had lunch at McIntosh. We were told they had wifi if you purchased a meal. So we did purchase our first meal on an island here and we were both disappointed. My conch chowder tasted like Cambells soup, literally, with the tiniest pieces of conch. And that wifi thing? No longer offered. Grrrr! Not a place I will suggest to anyone on Trip Advisor. Across the street was the over ground graveyard with a ton of history and memories in there.
The pink building pictured is ye olde gaol. That is what the sign says. Lol.
We went to the Leeward marina for laundry. It cost us $4 to dry our soggy sheets. So worth it. Now we are not part of the marina so we are kind of crashing the place. The guy was cleaning the bathroom and walked away for a bit, so I dunked my head into the sink and washed my hair with the liquid hand soap. OMG! It felt so good having clean hair. I threw it back into a ponytail, threw on my hat. When I get back to the boat I will put in hair conditioner and have Mark rinse me.
We made it back to the boat and we were told by the cruiser next to us, a mom with here 3 boys , that Pineapple's bar and grill has wifi. So we threw our stuff into LG again and tried to beat the arriving rain storm. We didn't make it though. We made it part way to the dock and the sky opened up again. There is so much rain coming down. Amazing.  We stood and waited for what seemed like forever. Mark ran over to Pineapples in the rain and got a little bit sent. I will try tomorrow.
We are stuck here again tomorrow due to the weather unless it gets better.

Day 4, destination Green Turtle Cay

It is Tuesday morning. I know this only because my vitamins are in one of those weekly organizers. We awake to a partly cloudy sky. I make coffee, oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar and butter for me and eggs and buttered bread for Mark. We have no refrigeration on the boat. We are using up what perishables we bought in Florida. We had them in the boat cooler with ice but the ice kept melting so fast. We realized that the sea water was coming in the cooler on a port tack. The water is about 84* and melting what we have.  So we are eating ham meat, cheese and eggs that  have not been refrigerated for 3 days now. Pray for strong stomaches.
We got into LG and motored to the dock in Fox Town. We are on a mission for fuel for NG. We have an outboard motor on NG, 9.9 hp, that helps to push us along. We feel that this is whimpy and we should rely on our sails. But this area is so big and you are in the open ocean, you would never get any where if you relied only on the wind. Regular gasoline is $6.25 a gallon. Deiesel is cheaper here. It costs $40 to fill 2 tanks. That will last us  a 1/2 gallon of fuel per hour. The gas station was run by a mom and pop. They were a 60 year old Bahamian couple  We chatted with her for a while. She showed me all their Bahamian paper money. They are so colorful and there are beautiful artistic  scenes that are different on each denomination. 
I tried to hook up to wifi to send my first couple of posts here but the signal wasn't strong enough. Green Turtle Cay is supposed to have wifi so I am trying to get caught up by then.
We got back to NG, put LG on the bow and set sail at 10 am for Green Turtle Cay. The first place we pass along the way is Coopers Town, it is a straight line on the ocean of brightly colored houses. Just what you would think of when you think Bahamas. Lilac, yellow, orange, turquoise, pink and hot pink, sand  and lime green. There is a pyramid behind it all. Anyone want to search that for us on the internet and tell us what this is? It looks so out of place in this charming settlement.
The sail over was great in the morning but soon we were caught in some horrific thunderstorms that started to have lightening. A sailboat with a large metal mast sticking out the top of it is not the best place to be. I lowered the sails, Mark set the auto pilot and we both went below to ride out the storm. It is very unsettling being in a boat below, going full forward and not being able to see where you are headed. This is even worse, in my opinion, than sailing at night. We went through three of these storms. The first storm tore our main head sail 10' long from the luff. That is really not good. I brought that sail down and put up our storm sail to continue on. We messaged Cindy, a sailing mentor, and asked her to send some sail repair tape to the office so that Rachel can bring it with her on her trip over from the states. She will be here come tuesday morning.  Can't waIt to have her aboard.
We made it to Green Turtle Cay around 7:30. We made some dinner and hunkered in for the evening, wet again.

Day 4, destination Green Turtle Cay

It is Tuesday morning. I know this only because my vitamins are in one of those weekly organizers. We awake to a partly cloudy sky. I make coffee, oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar and butter for me and eggs and buttered bread for Mark. We have no refrigeration on the boat. We are using up what perishables we bought in Florida. We had them in the boat cooler with ice but the ice kept melting so fast. We realized that the sea water was coming in the cooler on a port tack. The water is about 84* and melting what we have.  So we are eating ham meat, cheese and eggs that  have not been refrigerated for 3 days now. Pray for strong stomaches.
We got into LG and motored to the dock in Fox Town. We are on a mission for fuel for NG. We have an outboard motor on NG, 9.9 hp, that helps to push us along. We feel that this is whimpy and we should rely on our sails. But this area is so big and you are in the open ocean, you would never get any where if you relied only on the wind. Regular gasoline is $6.25 a gallon. Deiesel is cheaper here. It costs $40 to fill 2 tanks. That will last us  a 1/2 gallon of fuel per hour. The gas station was run by a mom and pop. They were a 60 year old Bahamian couple  We chatted with her for a while. She showed me all their Bahamian paper money. They are so colorful and there are beautiful artistic  scenes that are different on each denomination. 
I tried to hook up to wifi to send my first couple of posts here but the signal wasn't strong enough. Green Turtle Cay is supposed to have wifi so I am trying to get caught up by then.
We got back to NG, put LG on the bow and set sail at 10 am for Green Turtle Cay. The first place we pass along the way is Coopers Town, it is a straight line on the ocean of brightly colored houses. Just what you would think of when you think Bahamas. Lilac, yellow, orange, turquoise, pink and hot pink, sand  and lime green. There is a pyramid behind it all. Anyone want to search that for us on the internet and tell us what this is? It looks so out of place in this charming settlement.
The sail over was great in the morning but soon we were caught in some horrific thunderstorms that started to have lightening. A sailboat with a large metal mast sticking out the top of it is not the best place to be. I lowered the sails, Mark set the auto pilot and we both went below to ride out the storm. It is very unsettling being in a boat below, going full forward and not being able to see where you are headed. This is even worse, in my opinion, than sailing at night. We went through three of these storms. The first storm tore our main head sail 10' long from the luff. That is really not good. I brought that sail down and put up our storm sail to continue on. We messaged Cindy, a sailing mentor, and asked her to send some sail repair tape to the office so that Rachel can bring it with her on her trip over from the states. She will be here come tuesday morning.  Can't waIt to have her aboard.
We made it to Green Turtle Cay around 7:30. We made some dinner and hunkered in for the evening, wet again.

Day 3, destination Fox Town

We haven't been on land now for a couple of days. I am looking forward to using our dinghy tonight, Little Girl, to go into town. Sailing is much the same. The day is overcast though and the seas are a little more rough. We have about 25 miles to go, but add tacking in there and it makes it much longer.
We caught another amber jack for lunch. He was a good fighter. We cooked it up on the outside grill. It is white meat and medium dense. It didn't have a ton of flavor so I like the barracuda better.
We made it into Fox Town to anchor around 7pm. Two other boats are anchored beside us. We hop up onto the bow and drop the dinghy (LG) into the water, put the 2 hp motor on it, grabbed 2 pfd's and went to check our anchor hold. We have a glass bottom bucket for this. We made it ourselves. It is A 3 gallon white honey bucket that I got from work, cut almost the entire bottom out but leave a 1/2" lip. Place on the lip a ring of 4200 marine sealant. Cut a piece of  clear Lexan to fit so that it sits inside the bottom of the bucket with the lip holding it. Push down firmly to get a nice seal. Put something heavy inside of it for the night so it can dry. Our neighbor boat at the Las Olas marina, Jim and Ellie on Finnirish called it a "lookey bucket". Love it! So we took our lookey bucket and motored out to above the end of the anchor, placed the bottom of the bucket in the water and I'll be darned, it worked! That is so cool.
We were going to have leftovers for dinner with the 5 ears of corn on the cob that we had left over. But after we cooked it all up we found out that the leftovers didn't taste right. We had just corn on the cob for dinner, with a rum and diet for Mark and a glass of wine for myself. We also had popcorn with our remainder of the movie. Lol! Pretty healthy eating right there.
I guess we will go to town tomorrow morning.

Day 2, destination Great Sale Cay

Sailing today started out the same, nice in the morning. The sun is very warm. We sailed smoothly at about 4 knots. We seem to do really well sailing in the morning and then motor sailing in the afternoon. We have also found that the waves get quite a bit larger by 4:00pm  and we don't make much headway at all. I spend my days reading and laying in the sun, cleaning,  making lunch, or doing my blog entries on the tablet so that when we do have wifi I can load them up and not have to spend much time on the computer. I always wondered how cruisers found so much time to blog and enter their every thought, now I know. Sailing for this many hours a day, you have a lot of down time.
We fished for the day and caught what we think is an amber jack but on bringing it in , something larger decided that it needed lunch. His whole tail and back end were missing and the sides of him all gashed up.
We made our destination tonight but it was work. We anchored among 7 other boats. I made pad thai for dinner and we were so exhausted we turned in.
Destination tomorrow, Fox Town.

1st day Bahamas

We awoke the folowing morning to sunshine, hot weather, and so much humidity that you could drown a rat. My face and body glistens with sweat. There is no chance of looking any kind of cute over here. I will be lucky if I smell good. The water is a lovely aqua green though it must be a little sandy, there is nothing to see on the bottom. Mark went over to sign into customs after putting up our yellow Q flag. He returned with what seemed like a stack of papers that we had to fill out. We returned all of  the completed questions plus showed our pasports, $150. We had to mention that we wanted the fishing license. It was no extra $ but it is not just offered up. We also paid  $89.70 for a 30 ft. boat min. and we were all set. 
We walked up to the marina office and bought 2 COLD diet cokes, a couple of cards and used their computer for WIFI. We couldn't get the signal down on the docks. When we came back to our boat we found a new friend, Walter. He has the 36ft sailboat next to us.
He is from Guatemala and is being paid by the owner to sail his boat across the ocean to him in Spain. He asked us if we woild like a bowl of conch chowder that he made this morning. Would we ever! It was a clear stock, carrots, onion, cayenne pepper with big  half dollar sized pieces of yellow meat that I would describe as chewy clam meat. It was delicious. I love that our first conch was shared with us and not bought.
We blew up the dinghy and stored it on the bow of the boat. Then set sail for our next destination, Mangrove Cay. It was 36 miles away. We were sailing 5 knots when heading north but when we turned East at Memory Rock we needed the motor as the wind was straight on us again. We put out the two fishing poles to troll behind us. After a bit Mark landed what we think is a barracuda. He was 22" long. He had huge very pointy teeth. Mark fileted him and we were going to have it for lunch. But after looking in our book for fish identification I found that some of the fish here, namely barracuda, have what is called ciguatera poison. Ciguatera is a result of eating the larger fish in a certain species higher up the food chain. Ie. the fish that eat the fish that eat the coral. The symptoms are numerous and will onset pretty much immediately and can be mild to fatal. Symptoms can last from months to years. Relapses often occur. Now granted his fish wasn't the largest in the species by far, but it scared me away. So I had salad and he had grilled fish. I did taste it hough and it was AMAZING,! I caught a barracuda as well after lunch that was much bigger. I just had to show him how it was done. We threw him back. That is big for me. I am a catch em and eat em sort of girl. Around 4:00 the seas started bucking again. About 8:00 the sun had gone down and we have realized that we will not make our destination. Everytime that a wave hits the bow we slow to 1 knot. We still have 10 miles to go. It would take us over 5 hours to get there at this pace.  Everywhere that we have traveled today has been crystal green water and 12 ft. deep. So, we decided to anchor there in the middle of the ocean. It should have been on our bucket list but it is now.
To take our minds off off where we were and the bouncing of the boat we watched a dvd on the laptop, Something About Mary. It is a funny movie and it helped a bit but midway through we decided to turn in and try to sleep. I have to tell you that we will never anchor in the middle of the ocean like that again. It was the most horrific night that we have spent. The anchor at the bow but we were turned sideways with the waves. The boat was thrown sideways left and right all night long with the rails both starbord and port being immersed in the water. We lay in our bunks looking out the companionway at the the beautiful starry night with complete fear in us as our mast corkscrews around. We feel like we are on agitation cycle in the washing machine. Not much sleep was  had by either of us.
Our GPS has a setting on it that allows us to turn on an anchor alarm. We enter into the GPS a  short distance from where we are and if we were to break loose or drag the anchor across that perimeter then the alarm sounds until we shut it off. What piece of mind that gave us. That is golden right there.
Morning came and we did sleep a little but very lightly. We made it through and I can't tell you how much I wanted to just hot tail it out of there.
First time Bahamas cruiser tips  (FTBCT) #1...don't anchor in the middle of the ocean, no matter the depth.
Love always,
Shawnae and Mark

We have set sail to Bahamas

<p dir=ltr>It is a friday morning 3:30am, We are anchored in Lake Sylvia of the ICW outside of Ft, Lauderdale. Today is the day we have chosen for our passage to the Bahamas. Mark and I are quietly doing morning preparations to set sail. We are nervous and rightly so. We are setting out on an adventure that is new to us. Anything can happen and we know that. We trust in each other. We trust in our boat. However the wind, the sea and the weather can be ever changing. That is where you have to be diligent and watch, be aware, and ready to change course or drop sails before it is on top of you. <br>

By 3:45 we were exiting the ICW and entering the huge ocean in total darkness. There is no moon to light our path. All we can see are the starboard and port pilons and the lighted boats in the distance. The forecasted wind is SE early and then changing to winds out of the south early afternoon. We navigated well through the darkness but it is very unnerving relying on your instruments and not your own eyes.

We motor sailed out about 7 miles and we started to see some daylight break. Ahhh! We sailed for a couple of hours more getting about 3 or 4 knots and our wind was straight out of the East, where we were headed. Over the VHF radio, channel 16, we hear a call into the coast guard with a report of a funnel cloud directly off port everglades where we came from. We look in that direction and sure enough there are not only one but 3 funnel clouds. That was the first time that I have ever seen anything like that. As I watched them they would disipate and then reform their funnel and grow in size. In the end I am glad to report that they didn't amount to anything but caution on our part.

It was looking like a storm brewing kind of day so we kept our storm jib sail up the entire way, with the main sail, and motored. We came into a few more storms with rain that called for me to go on the bow and lower the jib sail. Now sailing Flathead Lake that is a task that comes with ease. Out here in the gulf  stream I decided that I am glad that I do yoga and have good balancing skills and that I may be the next Ty Murray, famous bull rider. It was super scary on the bow with us hitting the waves and bouncing back up. When we would crash back down, the nose of the boat would be immersed in the sea water, me along with that. I was wearing my life vest and harness with tethers and always clipped in on the jack line. We had so much water enterning in the cockpit. The ocean found any little crack it could to slither on in. But it is not surprising for the amount of water that came over head.

Once we were in the gulf stream , the water took on an indescribable beautiful cobalt blue. Simply stunning. We oohed and ahhed the whole way at the remarkable beauty.

The wind was frustrating for the fact that we were barely making any ground in the direction that we needed to go. What should have been a 12 hour crossing turned into 20. We hailed Old Bahama Bay marina on the radiio about 2 hours out to alert them of our late  arrival. They said they had a slip for us and we could check in with customs in the morning.

We were both cold, wet and beaten up by the exhaustion and emotions of the crossing. We were both silently sitting next to each other donned in our raincoats, towel over our lap for warmth, desperate to see the first sign of land. When Mark pointed out the first tower of light that he saw, i started to cry in pure relief that our goal was in sight. I stood on the bow of the boat, a place I have come accustomed to, holding a spotlight to navigate our way in through the jette and into the marina. The water is 12 ft deep and in the dark we could see no color.  We pulled up to the dock we were instructed to and were greated by loud Caribbean music, people partying and visiting, and a super nice Bahamian woman running the joint. She pointed out a suitable slip that we moved to and got checked in. After she left us, we got off the boat with our shaky land legs and walked around checking things out from the dock. We got in a nice shower up at the facilities bathroom to wash off all of the salt that we were covered in and went back to the boat for a good nights sleep in our damp beds.

What a day! But we did it. We crossed the ocean and we did it together as a team. We are partners on this boat, New Girl, and soon to be partners through life.

Love to you all.

Shawnae and Mark