We left Key Biscayne at 6am on Monday morning. We saw this great rainbow in the clouds on our way out of Florida, as you can see in the picture above. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rainbow in a cloud before. I thought it was a good omen, but it turns out the cloud got a bit darker once we got to the Bahamas.

It’s an easy out right to the ocean from where we were in No Name Harbor. It wasn’t bad but after a while it got a bit rough. Bill started feeling queasy almost right away and once we were set on our course, motorsailing towards the east, he went to bed for a couple of hours. When he got up he was feeling much better. We both managed to eat lunch and I decided to lie down for a bit. It didn’t take long for me to realize that wasn’t the best idea. I got up in just enough time to lose my lunch in the toilet. We both independently realized that we needed to add digging the “vomit bowl” out of the cabinet to our list of what we need to do before heading out to sea. I felt fine after that, just not exactly thrilled to have to spend the next twenty four hours in those kind of conditions.

Everything was working fine though, we were heading further north than we wanted but we could adjust that as we got into the Bahamas. I was a bit concerned that our depth sounder was reading seven to ten feet the whole way across the Gulf Stream, and I am pretty certain that is not the case. It seems that was just a weird anomaly though since it’s worked fine before and after that particular stretch of ocean.

We got into the Great Bahamas Bank just after dark. We had thought about anchoring on the Banks for a while to take a nap but we were running late so we didn’t, although we saw a number of boats that were anchored. It wasn’t really very rough at all and the night was beautiful with a bright moon and stars. I had a couple nice conversations with people on the VHF radio in the middle of the night, that always helps to pass the time.

In the morning we could see Nassau in the distance. We had a reservation at a marina there and were right on time, it was just after noon. We had been going for thirty hours straight. We decided to stop at their fuel dock before we went into our slip. That is where the trouble started. Never dock on low sleep, slow reflexes, and dehydration – it’s not a good idea. There was no one to help us on the dock – the Bahamians are very mellow and I’m sure it would have been a different story. Our spring line got caught on our stanchion gate and when we tried to free it we put the boat in the wrong gear and we ended up significantly damaging the gate. We also hit the piling with our anchor but that didn’t break anything. The owner of the marina took Bill some place to get it fixed but since it was Christmas Eve they were closed, Bill thought until Friday. No problem, we would wait until Friday.

We ended up crashing a French Canadian Cruisers Potluck at the marina pool that night. We were one of very few American couples there. The majority of the people here at the marina now are Canadians. Today Bill met one when she was talking rapidly in French and pointing at our boat. He asked her what she was saying and in the conversation learned that they had a broken part that needed to be fixed by the place we were hoping to go to on Friday and they weren’t opening again until January 3rd. We decided we will try to rig up something to fix our problem and move on. We are not staying in Nassau that long! We will see how it goes.

In the meantime we walked around the marina and found one of the only other American boats that is here. We saw they had the SSCA burgee up, which is the sailing organization we are also in. We stopped to say hello, discovered we kind of knew them already, and went on board to chat… for hours! They invited us back for a potluck Christmas dinner. We also decided to go to the Junkanoo festival with them, which I will explain in tomorrow’s blog. It starts at 3am tomorrow morning. We should have some incredible pictures to share – if all goes well.