Our goal this entire time was to make it to the Bahamas. After years of planning, months of a huge refit on our boat, and weeks of slowly motoring south, we were finally ready to head out!

There were more hoops to jump through than in normal years. Our cats make it even more complicated. I had to apply for a pet import permit for both cats from the Bahamas and then lug them to the vet for a final checkup and more paperwork. Then we needed PCR Covid tests within 5 days of arrival in the Bahamas including a health visa. The hard part was predicting a good weather window and getting all our Covid stuff in line in time.

We battened down the hatches and tied down everything that I thought could fall off.  It was finally time to go!!

We pulled the anchor up at 4 in the morning and headed towards the inlet with our new friends on SV Seahawk.  (Yes, both boats are named after birds!).  Poor jason barely made it out of the inlet before feeling sick.  Poor dude. Unfortunately our weather routing was kind of a crapshoot.  No matter how much we prepared and watched the models, we should have just taken the worst one and added 10%.  That would have been more accurate.  It was supposed to be 18 knot winds and 4’ seas.  We ended up with 25 knots and super steep 6’ or greater seas.  The current was super strong and the wind was out of the southeast so we were swept north pretty much immediately and couldn’t point the boat south enough to make a difference.  It was a super long and super painful day of hard sailing with the boat pitching around and shit falling off the shelves.  The cats were terrified, jason was sick, and I was bored but couldn’t do anything about it.

The sunrise was lovely though and I managed to drag out my big camera for a few shots before it got too snotty and I had to put it away.

We finally made it to west end at 3 thoroughly exhausted. Because of how steep the waves were more shit inside moved around than I had planned. Tons of stuff ended up on the floor. At one point I found some rope and bolted the seat cushions down so food didn’t fly out too. Our real casualty was the pizza stone that I just bought.

We got so many waves over the boat and unfortunately a lot of that water made it into the boat. We had water dripping from the light fixtures in both heads for some reason. Luckily I don’t think anything was damaged by the water but it’s definitely something I want to chase down and try to fix.

We were so exhausted by the time we arrived and cleared customs (yay!!) and got tied up at the dock that we somehow managed to forgot to actually tie our dock lines fully to the boat. Luckily it didn’t move overnight. We slept excellent!