KWANESUM: Freeport/Lucaya, Grand Bahama Island

We finally made it! We are in the Bahamas. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

We are so excited to be here….finally.

We left Merritt Island just as we had planned. What a concept! Sunday, January 25. It was a beautiful morning. Very calm. Backed easily out of the berth we seemed to be ‘stuck’ in and headed to the fuel dock. Added fuel and pumped out the head…always a charming event, but necessary. Paid our bill and we’re off!

Down the Barge Canal… headed to the ICW south. Seagulls followed behind our boat…must have been stirring up fish.

And dolphins. I love when the dolphins are out there. We had them appearing a lot on this leg of the trip. They just make you feel GOOD! I think I want to come back as a dolphin in my next life.

First day we anchored out behind a spoil island on the Indian River, which is this leg of the ICW. That put us around mile 925. The spoil islands are created from dredged material, sediments removed from rivers, oceans and estuaries to enhance navigation. Dredged sediments are deposited in the water to create new islands or to add to existing natural islands. Spoil islands can be less than an acre to more than 50 acres. The island we anchored near had a little sandy beach that several power boats pulled up to on the sunny Sunday where they were having a great time partying. Nice.

Considering we started at Mile1 it’s pretty fun to know we’ve almost gone 1,000 miles.

We are getting so much better at anchoring and knowing our boat; much more patient now. We just drop the anchor and get a beer! Works for me. Or…I’ll have white wine…depending on my mood. =) We let the anchor just sit on the bottom and do it’s thing, then let out more chain…the rule we go by is 5 to 1; five foot of chain per foot of depth, depending on how we feel the holding is, or how strong the winds are. We let that sit through at least one beer, then back down ‘til we know we’re not going anywhere. We open another beer and just smile! That’s the Kwanesum way of telling length of time…by beer.

We started again the next morning heading down the river to Ft. Pierce, FL at Mile 965. We plotted out a nice anchorage in front of the Harbortown Marina just past the North Bridge. We’ve become more patient about dealing with opening all the bridges, too. 98% of the bridge tenders are really nice and efficient. There’s always a couple that you wonder why they pursued this type of job. There were about 10 of us anchored there. A nice quiet anchorage.

Up again and off to Lake Worth, FL our final spot on the ICW until we head over to the Bahamas. We’ve had great weather on this leg of our trip. Not as warm as we’d like but nice. Always the dolphins poking up to make us feel good. We’re starting to get into more fabulous real estate on this leg heading into the Jupiter/Palm Beach area.

We leisurely motored down the river admiring the homes along the banks. Some of these places have totally screened in back yards. I mean the WHOLE back yard! I guess they must have some honkin’ bugs out here! Just before Jupiter we passed Mile 1,000! High five, on the side, under the leg, bump the behind…!! Here we are drifting along in our home, down the eastern seaboard, experiencing this part of the country from the water. It’s very surreal.

This leg of the trek along the ICW is open-bridge-city. But remember…we are now very patient people. Uh huh.

MILE 981.4: Jensen Beach Bridge – no problem, 65ft.
MILE 984.9: Indian River Bridge – no problem, now it’s a high rise.
MILE 995.9: Hobe Sound Bridge – opens on the hour and every 20 minutes, no problem
MILE 1004.1: 707 Bridge – opens on request, no problem.
MILE 1004.8: Jupiter Federal Bridge – opens on request, no problem.
MILE 1006.0: Indiantown Road Bridge – on the hour and half hour, problem!

“Indiantown Road Bridge, Indiantown Road Bridge, this is Kwanesum, Kwanesum over.” “This is Indiantown Road Bridge, go ahead.” “Yes, this is southbound sailing vessel Kwanesum requesting your 3:00 opening, over” “Can you please spell the name of your vessel, over” “Uh, roger, that’s K-W-A-N-E-S-U-M, Kwanesum, over” “Sorry folks, there’s a delay while we do some repair, we’ll open in 15 minutes.” “Roger. Kwanesum standing by on channel 9, over.” Arrghh! That’s going to put us at awkward times for the next 3 bridges that open on the hour and half hour. We slow down, turn around, turn around…turn around…
“Southbound sailing vessel the bridge will be opening in 5 minutes. What was the name of your vessel again?” “Uh, yes, that’s Kwanesum, over.” “Can you please spell that, over?” “Uh, roger that’s K-W-A....”
The alarm sounds, the arms go down on the road, the bridge opens… “Put the pedal to the metal, El!” We get under that one and race to make the next bridge so we don’t have to wait around.

MILE 1009.2: Donald Ross Bridge – on the hour and half hour.

“Donald Ross Bridge, Donald Ross Bridge, this is Kwanesum, Kwanesum, over.” No answer. Again we hail. No answer. There is another sailboat hailing the bridge so we’re not worried. Not sure why she couldn't hear us. The other bridges heard us fine. As we head under the open bridge we hear the bridge tender hail the Indiantown Bridge tender.
“Indiantown Bridge what was the name of the southbound sailing vessel that just cleared your bridge, over?” “That would be Kwanesum, over.” “Can you please spell that, over?” “Are you ready for this? K-U-A-…..” We laughed as we went along the way.

MILE 1012.0: PGA Bridge – on the hour and half hour, no problem.
MILE 1013.5: Parker Bridge – quarter after and quarter to the hour. Ok, so the last bridge we have to encounter has to be different. But we’re patient, remember?

No more bridges! We have arrived at Lake Worth at Palm Beach. We travel past Peanut Island to an anchorage next to the inlet out to the Atlantic. There are about 25 other boats anchored there but plenty of room. We find a nice spot and settle down for the night. It’s beautiful.

The water is the most beautiful aqua color and clear enough to see the bottom. We now wait for a weather window. What we need are south winds; south, southwest or southeast. We need to travel over the Gulf Stream that flows north and you want a south wind to do that in the most comfortable fashion. We’re not sure how long we’ll have to wait here. Some of the other anchored boats are heading south to Miami and crossing over to Bimini. We want to cross here to Freeport/Lucaya, Grand Bahama Island. Then we’ll work our way down to the Berry Islands and then to Nassau. From there we’ll go on to the Exumas. We’ll stay in Georgetown there for awhile. We’ll leave our boat there while we travel back to California in April for our son’s wedding! It’s a place where cruisers love to stay for awhile. S

hould be tons of fun and a good place to fly out of and leave our boat safely behind until we return.

As luck would have it, the south winds were available right away. So we decide to leave Lake Worth at 9:00pm the next night. We’re ready to go.

As Randy and I try to get a little sleep before we leave on Wednesday night, we both look at each other and decide…let’s just go! Up comes the anchor and we feel our way out of the anchorage in the dark at about 8:15pm. I’m at the helm…Randy is standing on the bow letting me know if I’m going to run into anything. I spotted my course out before we departed and had it on the chart plotter, too, just the way I wanted to go. It’s not easy to see in the dark! But we did fine. “See that red marker, El?” “Yeah, that’s the one I want to turn around…whoa! There it is! A little closer than I thought!”

We made our way out just fine, despite my little drama part I put in above. It makes for good blog reading to have a little drama. (I wasn’t really that close. Well, not too close, anyway.) It is always a challenge to exit an area in the dark. Thank heaven for the green/red lighted channel markers. The saying its Red Right Return to remember on which side to go. When you return to a harbor, red markers are on the right/starboard. When you exit the red markers are on the port side, green on the starboard. Just stay in between. I can do that.

The seas weren’t too bad. Winds, of course were right on our nose as we were traveling south. We did our usual 6 knots or so motor sailing since the wind was on our nose. We did 3 hours on/3 hours off watches. After a bit, we were slowing to about 3 knots! Which is crawling! We had hit the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream goes about 2.5 knots in the opposite direction. Like watching paint dry. Did I mention patience? Yes…patience. We need patience as we’re on this adventure. Longer/faster boats can power across the GS at a quicker pace. We aimed our departure at 160º which put us more south than we needed but then we’d ride the GS up a bit to aim across for Freeport/Lucaya.

The seas got a bit steeper and yours truly did pretty well most of the way. I put a patch behind my ear this time to be ready …just in case. As you know from my previous posts…I don’t always do well on rough seas. Randy powers through better than I do. On my 2:00-5:00am shift I started getting a little queasy. Crap. I wasn’t too bad but wasn’t very comfortable. Randy came on at 5:00am and I stayed in the cockpit and slept on the port side. After a bit I heard Randy rustling around putting up the sails and, whoa, I almost fell out of my spot. Ran had turned the boat up and it was a great point of sail with strong winds. Woohoo, we’re a sailin’ now! 8 knots, which is fast for our little boat. But it’s rough…I didn’t do so well on that leg of the trip. Dog-gone-it! But it doesn’t damper my enthusiasm one bit for what we’re doing. Not sure why, but it doesn’t. When later analyzing my sailing tummy situation I discovered that the patch behind my ear had disappeared! Somewhere along the line it fell off. Well no wonder! Right?! Next time I'll put super glue on that thing.

The sun is up, Ellen is green, and the sea is the most beautiful sapphire blue color. Just beautiful! I can’t move. I try to get up to relieve Randy but I can’t. I have to stay perfectly still or things won’t go well. I have my little bucket by my side. Don’t want to lean over the rail…might fall off! Attractive, eh? I’m going to do better. I just know it!

With winds a blowin’ at a pretty good pace we enter Port Lucaya at the Bell Channel. I can’t believe we’re here! We’re in the Bahamas, mon! I immediately start feeling better as the water is calmer in the channel, the air is fresh and bright and the excitement has got ahold of me. Taking my mind off things. The water turns a wonderful turquoise blue.

And clear, clear, sparkling clear. We weave our way around to the Grand Bahama Yacht Club where we’ll stay and check into the country.

We were tucked into our berth here by the nicest of people. Randy cleaned himself up and after we filled out all the paper work, went with the harbor tender over to the Immigration office. I stayed behind and cleaned up two very messy areas down below. One of my plants jumped off its perch, despite my thinking it would be ok, so I had a lovely pile of broken pot and potting soil. I also had some coffee ready to be made on the stove, safely tucked into the fiddles on the stove so it wouldn’t fall…it did. So I had coffee grounds in the galley to deal with. What a mess! It smelled good though! Like yummy French roast! Coffee grounds are the WORST to clean up.

All went well with immigration and checking in. I had to count the ammunition we had aboard …every bullet, which are in our safe…and get that info over to Randy, but no other problems. Except…when Randy returned and I checked over the cruising permit for the Bahamas, it only had 8 days down! Eight days?! I had filled out part of one of the many forms, thinking it was only for our stay here in Lucaya, which we anticipated to be for only about a week at the most. Oh dammit. Well we’ll deal with that tomorrow. Right now we’re hungry and tired and need to have a beer!