Sunday April 6: West End, Grand Bahamas Island - We Made It!!

At 5:10, it was still dark when we untied and left the marina. No lack of lights of course but it was still interesting making our way north on the ICW to the Port Everglades opening - a distance of about 5 miles with two bridges (which we fit under).

Peter and Cheryl had moved closer to the opening on Friday so as to avoid having to deal with the opening of the bridges.

The plan? We would be at the port opening around 6 am.

Good plan - no one told us about the three cruise boats coming in as we were wanting to go out!

On marinetraffic.com (which shows the position of any ship/boat if they are broadcasting their position on AIS - Automatic Identification System), we could see the 3 ships were approaching the port.

By the time we arrived one was already in it's dock, one was backing into it's dock as we were approaching and the third HUGE one was just backing up in the channel as we were passing it to make our way out.

We could see Surona on the AIS site. They had been delayed by the cruise ships coming in so our timing was almost perfect. Out we went!

Sunrise shortly after 7 am was a welcome site. There is something about boating in the dark that just doesn't agree with me :-)

It wasn't long before were away from the congestion of Port Everglades and headed out to sea.

The seas were as promised: 2 to 3 feet, an occasional 4. Long swells but rather confused for the first few hours.

We traveled within sight of Surona most of the morning and as the day wore on we ended up just a bit in front of them.

The light winds out of the south continued and allowed Surona to motor sail which added to her speed.

At one point we looked back and Surona had stopped - floating with the wind and waves.

Cheryl called: Peter had a fish on! By Cheryl's description, we knew it was a dolphin fish.

What a great job they did getting it in the boat!

But we had the cooler full of ice so they passed the fish over via a line thrown to us. I say possession is 9/10 of the law, right?

Steve had two lines out for most of the 11 hour trip but sadly didn't catch anything. He thought a tuna might be a very nice compliment to Peter's dolphin!

He was fishing with a rigged ballyhoo (small fish with a large hook in it). When he pulled it in, he found that something had bitten the end of the ballyhoo but missed the hook!

Maybe next time ....

As we finally sighted the West End, it was time to raise the yellow quarantine flag. This flag has to be flown until customs has been cleared.

We were ready to make our way into the marina, clear customs and spent the night.

And we finally have a stamp in our passport!!! We've had the passports ever since they were required to travel to Canada but this is the first place we've been that actually stamped them.

How cool is that? 64 years old and we finally have a stamp. Maybe that's actually sad ......





Once we cleared customs, our Bahamian courtesy flag is now flying. It's now time to experience the Bahamas!!