Crossing Back

Our weather window opened up beautifully.  Three days of calm waters to cross back to the U.S.A.  Not quite as perfect of our first crossing, but almost. We headed out, basically retracing our route across the shallow Bahamian Banks.

The first night we anchored at Great Sale Cay and enjoyed an amazing sunset and the wondrous show in the night sky, far away from any ambient light.

The second day we travelled to West End, appropriately named as it is, well, at the west end of Grand Bahamas island.  We pulled in, fuelled, paid a visit to the customs office to tell them we were leaving, which was unnecessary, but we did it anyhow as we're still a little nervous about all the immigration and customs stuff.  We looked across the marina and low and behold, there sat friends Dave and Michelle on M/V Just Us!!  They had just crossed from the States!!  The boating world certainly seems small sometimes.

Well, you just never know who you'll run into!
Dave and Michele (M/V Just Us)

We enjoyed a great, albeit short visit with Dave and Michelle then pulled out to anchor, all ready to head out across the Gulf Stream first thing in the morning.  The water out there was so amazingly clear.  One can see every detail on the bottom.  Being a swimmer, I just had to put on my suit and take a dip.

B-Bye Dave & Michele!

We could see there was some current in the water and the tide was changing but I was caught off guard by how strong it was.  I jumped in and was quickly swooshed along, a little concerned it was going to carry me all the way to Portugal!  A couple of gentle strokes towards the boat didn't do much.  I had to put some pretty good oomph into my strokes to get back against all that current.  An enhanced respect for tidal currents was earned that day!

So hanging on to a line from the boat, I played around in the current for a bit...  until Jeff cautioned me to get out of the water, NOW!  I great big turtle was coming over to pay a visit.  I'm not sure if it would have come right over or if he was friendly or not but I decided I had had enough by then anyway and scampered quickly out.

At first light we weighed anchor and left. The crossing was a little "bumpy" at first but quickly settled down.  It took us nine hours to get across from West End Bahamas to Lake Worth in Florida and to be honest it was a little boring.  There's not much to look at out there. We don't have auto helm so we took turns hand steering, which requires some concentration as there are generally no points of reference except for that magenta line on the chart plotter. I'm always grateful when a faster boat passes us and we can follow it for awhile.  Makes the steering easier.

Land ahoy!  Florida's buildings start to come into view on the horizon

We dropped the hook in Lake Worth and called in our arrival to the 1-800 number.   They gave us a check in number and told us we had twenty-four hours to present our passports to an immigration officer, and sorry, the local office was closed for the weekend so we'd have to make our way to the airport at West Palm Beach.  Ugh.  That meant an expensive taxi ride.