Oh what an absolute thrill to be writing this from the Bahamas!!

To give you a more precise idea of where we are, the Abacos are the northern part of the Bahamian chain of islands and are part of the Near Bahamas - the islands closest to Florida. That group also includes Grand Bahama, and the Bimini, Berry, and Andros Islands. Further down are the Exumas.

There are several jumping off places in Florida to start the crossing, and several arrival spots in the islands. The route we used, Lake Worth to Memory Rock (as our waypoint on the Bahamas Banks) with our first stop at Great Sale Cay worked well for us. We left Lake Worth at 11pm on Wednesday, arrived on the Banks around 8am Thursday, and had the anchor down at 3:30pm Thursday. People usually leave at night so as to arrive on the Banks (shallow water) in daylight. It truly was amazing to see the depth sounder move from "last measured depth 510 feet" (really over 2000 feet) to "15 feet" so quickly. The water changed colour and all of a sudden we had arrived even though there was still no land in sight.

Despite the forecasted wind and waves, the crossing was a bit anticlimactic. We had everything carefully stowed and tied down in anticipation of 4-6 foot waves and 15 to 20 knot winds, and we put the mainsail up just before we emerged from Lake Worth inlet. The waves were no more than 2 feet and the wind didn't hit the double digits till around 5 in the morning, so our mainsail was up more for looks than for power. The waves were the corkscrewy kind however - a little this way and a little that way in a following sea - the kind that means we don't spend time below decks unless we are sleeping. Fortunately, neither Jim nor I are prone to seasickness, and we each sleep quite well when the other is on watch, so it was a straightforward crossing for us. (It's quite different from our first overnight in Lake Ontario when we were so excited that we both stayed up all night and were totally exhausted the next day!)

Jim had carefully plotted our course to take into account the strong currents of the Gulf Stream. It really is like a river running north through the Straits of Florida. Any boat crossing it tries to work with it rather than fighting it so we were pointing at a waypoint a fair bit south of where we wanted to end up. (I can remember doing the very same thing with our little sailboat at Amherst Shore 30 years ago. To end up in front of the cottage, I had to aim farther up or down the shoreline, depending on which way the wind was blowing. With the centerboard up on that Invitation, it was pretty much at the mercy of the wind). The current of the Gulf Stream was strongest near the Florida coastline, so we gradually adjusted the heading over the course of the trip, and ended up where we wanted to be at about the time we expected to be there. Our only entertainment besides watching the stars above and the bioluminescence below was meeting a cruise ship right in the channel as we were leaving Lake Worth. I hugged the green marker as closely as I dared, and someone called out a Thank You from the pilot boat as it passed. It felt like I could have reached out and shaken his hand, but he was probably a bit further off than that! We expected that there would be a number of boats crossing that night since the weather window looked to be a short one, but Strathspey's was the only pleasurecraft light we saw until early morning when we spotted another one.

I was on watch at dawn. I checked the gradually increasing wind and determined that it just might be possible to sail so I put out the staysail and then the yankee (the large foresail that we carry instead of a genoa), throttled down and then turned the engine off entirely. Ahhh, it felt blissful... the silence... the ever so gentle beginning of a new day. We hadn't had that engine off in weeks - in over 1000 miles. I had almost forgotten how absolutely wonderful it is to hear nothing but the waves brushing up against the boat as they swish on by. It is a totally different experience. And so I sat - perched on my preferred seat up on the stern railing in the starboard corner - knowing that my co-captain was sleeping below, that this trusty boat was carrying us on to the next stage of this amazing journey - feeling the warm wind on my cheeks, and watching the beginning of the day.

We arrived at Great Sale Cay (and by the way, Cay is pronounced Key, just so you know) to find only one other boat besides Strathspey there. Dragonfly, a catamaran with Cindy and Rick onboard arrived shortly afterward, and so after we jumped in the water for our first swim in this clear green water, Mary and Blair, Cindy and Rick joined us on Madcap for a celebration. The champagne bubbled, the conversation between old friends and new friends flowed easily, and we toasted our success in reaching this goal. It seems a lifetime ago that we sat around a table in Ottawa and said we four would sail our boats down the St Lawrence River and all the way to the Bahamas. After a year of planning, and almost six months of traveling, it was absolutely thrilling to say, "WE DID IT!"