The crossing to Bahamas

We made it!  We are now at the West End on Grand Bahama Island all checked in and we have a 90 cruising pass, more than enough.  We had a nice crossing a bit bumpy but not bad AT ALL.  Yeah!!!

We were delayed a bit leaving Stuart as we needed to wait for the bridge to open, a 45 min delay for a train to pass.

someone is building a good size house

holy cow! its and addition!

We crossed directly from Port St Lucie Inlet rather than travelling an extra 35 miles south and crossing .  We were a bit worried about the inlet as the charts and Active Captain had alot of local knowledge about the inlet and when we decided on Wed to cross from there we were told we were nuts!  The words that kept ringing in my ears was " at least 5 boats a day run aground here" and its never a good sign when a Tow Boat US is always sitting here just waiting.  These 2 things are actually fact, but then the big sport fishing boats go through here all the time, and they draw more then we do.  The deciding factors to me in the end was, while doing laundry I ran into Bob on Istaboas who has a much larger boat with a much deeper draft 6' we are 4' he said he travels this inlet without a problem. The crossroads just before the inlet were more shallow and confusing.  Well dam we have to go through the crossroads no mater what!  He gave us some instruction on the markers to favor etc.  Thank You Bob it was a breeze and saved us 35 miles and at least an extra days travel. 

                                       Heading out, all this water makes you feel really small

                                                            The depth finder flat lined

                        Wow all these numbers are depths our depth finder only goes to 499 feet 
                                                   

We are at the Old Bahama Bay marina along with our friends on Algonquin, Something Special, Brown Eyed Girl and Passport, we had cocktails aboard SweetPea with everyone then Jim and I went over to Teasers for an Island drink and some delicious conch.  Tomorrow we all head out to  Great Sale Cay to anchor for the night then onto Green Turtle Cay Marina.  So there will be no posting tomorrow night.

Here are a few more pictures of the day...................

                                                     The color of the water is beautiful

                                                         Entryway to the marina

                                                                       Cocktails

                                                           Out for a stroll

                                                            This is the beach at Teasers

                                                The close to our first day in the Bahamas