SURPRISE !! We are in the Bahamas!

No, I am not kidding! We really are here.  Yes, a bit of a change of plans occurred after I last posted. OK, Here's how it happened.  We woke up Wednesday morning and checked the weather. We were again feeling discouraged about how we would be fighting strong south winds yet again and debating between the ICW and ocean to do it. Then Paul said -we could just go out to the Bahamas- the winds are right for that. So we thought and talked about it. To leave for the Bahamas from the Lake Worth inlet (which is where we were) we would go straight across to the Abacos (the northern Bahama islands). We had previously decided to go further down Florida to cross at Biscayne Bay because our destination was the Exumas-a different part of the Bahamas. We had mainly decided this because we have been told that though the Abacos are beautiful, it is quite a bit colder there so we were choosing the Exumas because they would be warmer to swim in and such. But as we were checking the extended forecast, we were bummed that not only would we be fighting winds still to get to Biscayne Bay; but also, once we got there, the winds were supposed to change and turn North which is not good at all for the gulf crossing.  So we were probably going to get stuck in Biscayne for several days before we could cross the gulfstream into the Bahamas. So, since the wind and waves forecast looked good to cross Wed and would not be good again for several days, we grabbed fuel, filled our water tanks, and took off.  That is very spontaneous for us!  We got a bit of a late start since this was a sudden decision, so it meant we would arrive after dark. But we are getting good at anchoring in the dark I suppose (still don't love doing it that way though).
So we headed out.  The first hour was very rough with waves MUCH bigger than forecasted - from 6-10 feet-I am not exaggerating, instead of 2-3 feet. We hoped it was just at the inlet because some inlets are rough with the different currents hitting each other, but it was really rough.  We decided to keep going for a little while and see if it got better and an hour or two later it did improve a little so we kept going.  It gradually improved over the next few hours, but it was a fairly wild 9 hours to be honest. The waves were probably 3-6 ft most of the day. We got here (The west end of Grand Bahama Island) around 7 pm and anchored and we were so relieved to be done with it.  Now we will still work our way down to the exumas over the next several days and won't have to wait around in Florida.
The gulf stream was pretty cool.  The water looks so dark blue and gets super deep.  It was weird to watch the depth soundings on the chart plotter go from 50 ft to 200 ft, to 1000 ft to over 2500 ft in some points. Crazy.  Now we are here and we can always remember we made it to the Bahamas on 12-12-12.

Late in the day of the crossing, we passed a Carnival cruise ship. That was a little entertaining.
 

 

Now we are excited to be somewhere new. Paul went and cleared us with customs Thursday morning and then we decided to go to the marina nearby for a day to recover from the past 5 days and to take showers, do laundry, etc. We plan to anchor almost all of the time (because it is free and we will run out of money really fast if we go to marinas a lot) but it was heavenly to have a little break and the nice facilities for a day. We do have showers on the boat, but we have not been taking full showers because we need to conserve water as our supply is limited. 

 

 

Once we got schoolwork and laundry and cleaning done, the kids wanted to go play in the water. There is a nice little beach right at the marina. It was very breezy and even rainy off and on but that didn't stop them. They were so excited to get in the ocean.  They found a few fun creatures right off. That was cool.

**This should be a picture of me pulling my hair out in frustration but I didn't take a picture of that.  :)

Our not so good luck today is that our generator broke.  Of course as soon as we leave the country and don't have easy access to parts and such.  There is some new issue -whether big or small-almost daily with this boat.  We know that lots of people have mentioned that owning a boat means always having a project or something to fix, and they were not kidding.  We really have a love/hate relationship going on with this boat. So I don't know if we will stay here and get the part shipped here, or if we are going to sail to a bigger town and deal with it there.  Good thing we don't have any set plan or place we have to be, because plans seem to change daily.
I will try to get the pictures to load and add them soon. I have been trying for 2 days now though, so I am giving up for now.