We are in the Bahamas at last!!

We arrived here yesterday afternoon after leaving Lake Worth about 3:00 am. We had tried to leave Monday morning at 3:00 am. The wind and the waves were forecasted to have died down, but as we motored out of the inlet, the wind increased and the waves were hitting on the shore. We didn’t make it out of the inlet before deciding to turn around and try again the next night. Just as we decided to turn around a huge construction barge heads into the inlet and we turned in front of him. Luckily he saw us. We anchored back at our spot and explained to the kids why we didn’t go. They were fine.

The winds and seas were again scheduled to drop the next day so we decided we would try early in the morning. Of course, all day the wind kept blowing. We went to bed depressed thinking that we most likely wouldn’t make it out that night either. At 3:00am we were up, this time with much less enthusiasm as the winds were still higher than predicted. When Dan stepped out into the cockpit he noticed a boat had anchored really close to us and it looked as if he was over our anchor. This was a fear of his, that someone would anchor too close and we wouldn’t be able to leave. Dan started the engines, thinking this might wake up the other boat and he would move, but it didn’t work. We were really afraid to try to get the anchor up because he was so close. Now we were thinking weren’t going to be able to leave that night either.

We decided we had to wake him up somehow. After all, he was over our anchor; it was his problem too right? I shined our mega spotlight in his boat windows while yelling “Excuse me. Hello”.

A few minutes later he comes on deck, “Are you trying to wake me?” Smart guy!

“Yes.” I yelled back “We are trying to leave and think you are over our anchor. Can you move?”

He replied that he would watch us and if we got close he would start his engines and move. Ok fine. I start hauling up the anchor. To my embarrassment I realized he is not over our anchor, WE are. Alegria had drifted forward on her anchor chain so that our anchor is actually under our boat. That’s something I might have checked before I woke him up with my spotlight. Sorry! My bad! Now we realized we had to go because we’re too embarrassed to come back to this spot. So we headed out and even though the wind was still strong, the seas were much calmer. As we motored out into the inlet, the construction barge careened for us again. I got out my trusty mega spotlight and flashed it at the barge. I’m sure the captain appreciated being blinded by the spotlight. He didn’t slow down though. He cut right in front of us very close, payback I’m sure for the spotlight incident.

We were out of the inlet and into the ocean. The seas were short period waves, about 3 to 4 feet and it was a lot of up and down at first, then a couple of hours into it the seas settled down nicely. We had an incredible full moon, and a blanket of stars guiding us. It was beautiful. We saw only a few other ships on the radar, otherwise the Gulf Stream was ours.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel the first time I was out in the middle of the ocean with no land around. I was afraid I might get seasick or scared, but neither happened. The kids slept late, enjoying the ride. We motored over as we were dead into the wind. About 2:00pm we pulled into Old Bahama Bay Marina for our custom check in. The long awaited Bahamas were now ours.

We left North Palm Beach Marina yesterday and are currently anchored in Lake Worth waiting for our weather window to cross to the Bahamas!

The water maker installation by Greg at VillageMarine went well. It took about two days and the water from it tastes great. We thought we would be leaving here Thursday, but engine problems held us up. The port engine wasn’t putting out water and Dan realized the water pump was broke. Not that big a deal, but when Dan tried to remove it, it was impossible.

Apparently, the water pump had been leaking salt water in the engine for some time. This caused rust and corrosion to build up on the engine. Dan didn’t have the tools to work on it so he called a Yanmar mechanic. When the mechanic tried to remove the water maker, the crankcase cracked. Now, in addition to getting a new water pump, we had to replace the crankcase. If this had happened at the Palm Coast Marina it wouldn’t have been too bad, but this marina was expensive. A very large mechanic bill and 20 days of marina fees later, it was fixed.

We put the time to good use though. We went to the Palm Beach boat show, rented movies from Blockbuster, and went swimming. Tristan put his new docking skills to work and helped out as a dockhand. Here though the tips went from a few bucks to $5 and $10?s. Glad someone was bringing in some money. He also impressed the captain of the nine million dollar mega yacht, Maverick, which docked behind us. Later while Dan and I were sweating in the sun waxing the boat, we looked up to see Tristan waving at us from the deck of Maverick. The captain was giving him a private tour.

We went to the beach a few times but there were rip currents and Man O War jellyfish warnings, so the kids had to be careful when they went into the water. Tessa celebrated her 7th birthday while we were here. That was fun. Normally her birthday would consist of a lot of kids at some party place, where it was usually too loud and too much money. This time, while we couldn’t give her a lot of friends, we could give her our time. So for the whole day she called the shots and we spent all of our attention on her. She loved it. Even though we are frustrated we aren’t in the Bahamas and the Bahamas have now taken on an almost mystical feel, we are beginning to enjoy where we are. We finally have almost all the stuff stored so we aren’t fighting that every day and now we can start to enjoy the boat and each other.

We have more boat projects. Our refrigerator has a mind of its own. About every 2 weeks it stops working. When it stops I have to move everything out of the refrigerator to our freezer. Dan shuts the refrigerator down for a few days and then it starts working again. I move everything back from the freezer to the refrigerator. This lasts about 2 weeks until the refrigerator stops again. Again we move everything to the freezer. A few days later, all is right in refrigerator world and it works again. After the last time, we bought a new compressor and of course before we could install it the refrigerator began working again. Such is the glamorous boat life.