Follow Our Track
We had such a great time in the Bahamas that we did not want to leave, but we have to take care of a few things such as bottom paint (and other maintenance issues) for Shadowfax, jury duty, and a doctors appointment for Bob.
We left Nassau with our buddy boat “Slow Dancing” (Dan and Melissa) and motor sailed about as far as we could go in daylight, but it actually was dark when we set the anchor in the middle of the bank (Grand Bahama Bank) called Mackie Shoal. As expected the boat pitched and rolled with the wind and the waves all night, we held firmly but I got zero sleep. The next day we pulled into Bimini and got a slip at Browns Marina. Although we wanted to spend a few days here, we had a weather window the following day and took it to cross back over the Straights of Florida (Atlantic Ocean) in the Gulf Stream and into Port Everglades (Ft Lauderdale). From there we cleared customs, what a hassle that was. It seems I did not have every i dotted on our customs paperwork so instead of clearing in with a phone call it required a physical visit. Dan and Melissa also had to see them so we got a cab and in 5 minutes we were out of there. The ride back was interesting, we decided we needed exercise so we would walk, only problem they had all the roads torn up and no sidewalks, off we go Dan and I lead the way, the girls are cursing us with comments like “This is stupid, No sidewalks, Middle of nowhere” Sure no problem honey we’ll be there soon. A construction worker saw us wandering around and took pity on us and offered a ride, never take a ride with strangers! He turned out to not be Charles Manson. We had a great last few days with our friends as they headed south to Key West and we headed north to Delray Beach to see our girls. From Delray with headed to Ft Pierce, where we will spend several weeks getting maintenance completed, boat cleaned up and prepare for our next adventure back up the ICW to the Chesapeake for the summer.