Woke up at 5:30 and actually got out of bed about 15min later. Shawn struggled with getting the anchor out, he claims that a few times it felt like something was pulling it down. ~~Creeeepyyyy~~
We did get it out and got started properly around 6:15-30ish. Navigated around barges and other large craft and headed northeast to West End.
I finally understand the term "Bluewater". When we got out to the Atlantic proper, the water changed from greenish-blue to... Blue. Deep, deep beautiful blue.
I had always heard the term before but never really *got* it until now.

Also the depth dropped hundreds of feet until the depth sounder gave up, at around 650ft

We pretty much had to motor the whole way, full throttle, and it took literally all day. We only arrived in the Bahamas proper at about 8pm - right at sundown. Someone told us it only took 6 hours for a crossing... In what, a powerboat?

The crossing itself was so boring and stressful. I don't know how it can be both - but it was, and perhaps those are truly the best words to describe adventuring in general. The sea was gentle today, but even at its more gentle it's still quite dangerous, especially below deck. I bonked my head once, almost fell countless times, and slammed my finger in a drawer that suddenly closed on a particular large wave (nothing broken - but I'll be honest here, I cried for a solid few minutes. This was also later in the journey so perhaps "straw that broke the horses back" sort of thing).

We did eventually make it across, and when we did, we tried to anchor where we were (north of West End. We - I - thought it might be good shallows and aimed for that). Unfortunately it was the famous Bahamian hard bottom covered in a thin layer of sand, which is totally unanchorable.

So we did what we had to - took out the spotlight, turned on the running light, and grabbed a few cans of Monster. West End was 14 nautical miles south, but definitely a safe anchoring point. And perhaps it would have cell phone tower service. We have unlimited text and 2G data, but that's not really helpful without a signal.

I had a small heart attack when the engine stopped as that leg of the journey started - but thankfully, the active tank was just out of fuel. So we now know that fuel throttle we can get about 70nm, give or take. Good to know! We have a whole nother tank and an extra 10 gallons to boot, but we'll still pay to totally refuel for our return journey. That'll hurt the wallet, but it must be done.

The night journey was pretty scary (to me). Every noise was terrifying. It was long and slow with wind STILL. ON. THE. NOSE. WHY. Aaaaagfhfhfhdhd

A flying fish decided to join us and jumped onboard at about 10:30pm. That was pretty entertaining. I picked up the little one with a glove and threw it back from whence it came.

The wind picked up as we progressed, so we had to kick Bekey back to full throttle. The gusts were so strong they blew us off course and Shawn had to take over for the autopilot. It was a harrowing experience.

We picked up cell service and got in contact with our family and let them know we made the crossing okay (we were half worried if we didn't get to a tower soon Shawn's mom would call the coast guard - which is a good thing to worry about!)

We got in at a West End marina at 2am. Tied off well to account for tidal shift. Felt tired and weird.
From 5:30am one morning to 2am the next... A 20 hour day. Pretty damn intense. Going to go collapse now.

And in case we haven't said it enough - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU HEATHER YOU WONDERFUL BLESSING for guiding us through that tiring leg of the journey so we didn't go careening into coral heads in the dark of night.

I think/hope we're at the fun part now?