We arrived in Lake Worth on 4/10. We sat in that anchorage for a while, we explored Peanut Island for a day but there wasn’t much there, eventually we moved down to West Palm Beach anchorage so we were right by the city dock. We went ashore a couple times for happy hour and for stocking up on groceries.

We’ve been waiting for a weather window for our Gulf Stream crossing to the Bahamas. Because it’s a significant current, if the wind has any northern component, it kicks up a rough swell. If there’s an east wind, we can’t sail. So we need a south or west wind, and low swell.

The first place we can check in is West End, we’d have to leave about 2am for that. We’re talking about avoiding West End because the anchorages in the area have poor holding, and the marina is very expensive. Alternately, we could go all the way to Great Sale Cay, anchor for the night, and then check in at Green Turtle Cay the following afternoon. We’d have to leave about 8pm and it would be a very long trip.

Almost two weeks after we first arrived in Lake Worth, we finally had a decent window. We could either leave Weds night / Thurs morning, and motor into light winds for a few hours before it clocked around to the south. Or we could leave Thurs night / Fri morning, and sail in some pretty strong south winds and probably rough swell. Right around the time we were thinking it would be really nice to have other people to chat with about a Gulf Stream crossing, I saw a post on Facebook about another couple planning on leaving Thursday from Lake Worth. Perfect! We made plans to meet up with Le Ann and Mark on s/v Y Dream in the afternoon.

The one important piece of info we gleaned from our chat with Y Dream was a third-hand anecdote that Customs in Green Turtle Cay had sent people BACK to West End to check in, because technically you’re supposed to check in at the first port you arrive at. It’s completely anecdotal and it might be based on whomever is at the Customs desk, but it’s a pretty big risk – it’s a long trek from West End to GTC. We decided it wasn’t worth the risk, so we’re going to check in at West End. We also decided that we wanted to leave Thursday morning to avoid rough swell, because we didn’t want a repeat of our last offshore passage.

So! We arrived in Lake Worth on 4/10. We’re finally crossing over to the Bahamas on 4/25. It’s been a long wait, I’ve been going absolutely stir crazy.

We were underway by 1:45am. As we exited the inlet, wind was right on the nose. We tried to tack south, and do some sailing, but going parallel to the coast was still too close to the wind, I had to point the boat back toward shore in order to sail! So we nixed that plan and motored. At about 3am, we were both still awake when Y Dream hailed us – they had just gotten underway. They passed us around 6am, they have 50% more horsepower than us and it shows.

Of course the wind never clocked around as forecast, so we motored into the wind and waves all day. This slowed us down, we were making less than 4 kts of headway. We were finally able to roll the genoa out and motor sail, around that time the seas also started to grow significantly. We were bouncing, but it wasn’t bad.

We were nearing the point where we needed to pull in the fishing lines, and we would finally be able to pull the main up and actually sail, but instead we had a fish on! Kyle tugged on the hand line and there was only a little resistance so he thought it may be a small tuna.

It was not.

I grabbed the gloves, put the right lens on the camera, and throttled back while he pulled in a giant bull mahi! I grabbed our fish moonshine and squirted the gills, Kyle tied a line on the tail just in case. Of course we pull in a fish during the worst sea state we’ve seen all day, so we had to be pretty careful not to accidentally land on a hook or the gaff while we posed for photos. This guy was all of 4 feet long!

We pulled in a fish, we dispatched him as humanely as possible…what the heck is step 3? Kyle said he had to run inside and watch a YouTube video on how to filet a mahi, I thought that was a joke (we definitely don’t have internet offshore) but he disappeared inside for a while so he must have been serious. He came back out and collected 8 lbs of filets from our beautiful mahi.

By the time the fish was taken care of we were about an hour from shore. We tried to raise the marina or Y Dream on the VHF but got nothing (we’ve been having spotty VHF issues). The phone started dinging, so we were back in cell range, and Kyle called the marina. We were tired and a little beaten up, the price of a cozy safe marina sounded like a much better plan than a poor anchorage where I wouldn’t sleep at all. However, it was not to be – there was a big fishing tournament and they had no room left. We anchored just outside the breakwater and immediately dinghied in with our passports and customs forms.

Check in was a complete breeze, everyone was helpful and friendly. We texted Y Dream (our Google Fi* phone connected seamlessly, we have to pay for calls here but other than that, same messaging and data rates), and they invited us to go find a tiki bar, but I had hardly slept or eaten all day and alcohol seemed like a bad idea. We headed back to Hobbes for fresh fish tacos.

We shared a bottle of champagne and watched the sun set.

We made it! We’re in the Bahamas!

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