Bahamas or Bust!

Alaya spent about 10 days in St. Augustine. Lucas stayed with Alaya, while I flew home for an unplanned visit. While I was gone, Lucas enjoyed the slightly warmer temperatures and worked on some boat projects. This was his longest stretch alone on the boat. It was weird leaving him but I’m really glad I could be home with friends and family for an extra week. 

I returned to Florida on January 19. It was warmer than Michigan but not by much. A few days later, we almost got snowed on again! This was the same winter storm that dropped 10” of snow in New Orleans and a couple of inches in Jacksonville. Our extended stay allowed us time to catch up with Jackie, Dan and Lenny, friends we’d made on our last two stops in St. Augustine. 

Once that storm passed, the temps stayed in the 40s and 50s with a stiff north wind but we decided to move again. We managed to get to Daytona Beach around sunset on our first day. It was a tough anchoring, we were cold, hungry and the wind was still blowing hard. We touched bottom (aka ran aground) as we tried to find a spot among derelict boats. We managed to finally get the anchor down only to have it drag. I begrudgingly hauled it up and found a big ball of thick string on the anchor. We reset ourselves and tried anchoring again. Standing on the bow in all my winter gear, with the wind blowing 20 kts in my face, I definitely wondered what the hell are we doing with our lives. 

Cruising can be very stressful and sometimes Lucas and I lose our cool. The important thing is that we both don’t freak out at the same time (that has only happened once and it was ugly). Daytona Beach was apparently my turn. Thankfully the anchor held on this second attempt. My freak-out was appeased with some warm food, TV on my phone and an early bedtime. We had to get up and do it all again the next day!

This ended up being our last cold day. As we worked our way south on the ICW, the temperatures improved and so did the number of dolphin sightings. The next day, we found a quiet anchorage by a bridge near downtown Titusville. SV Misty ended up right next to us. We motored another 40 miles the following day and anchored for the night by yet another highway bridge with SV Misty. Larry and Ginny and their friends dinghied over to Alaya for some route planning and buffalo chicken dip. A potential weather window to the Bahamas was shaping up for later that week. We were nervous but excited to see how it evolved.

As I have mentioned before, finding good crossing windows for the Gulf Stream can be difficult, low pressure systems come across southern Florida and leave with wind out of the north. North winds cause steep and often dangerous waves in the stream since the wind and current oppose each other. As a sailboat, we need about 36 hours of favorable conditions for our window. In the winter, these low pressures can roll through every five days, leaving little to no opportunity for a smooth crossing. This upcoming week was forecasted to have very little wind, so we would need to motor but the waves were expected to be small and in the right direction.

On the fourth day of travel on the ICW, we arrived in Fort Pierce. We booked three nights at the Safe Harbor there, utilizing our amazing membership perks one last time (our membership expired on January 31, 2025). Being a Safe Harbor member the last two seasons has really helped us ease into cruising life. Larry and Ginny were docked a few slips down. 

We had another taste of how small the sailing world is that night in Fort Pierce. Dave and Cindy have a cottage in Sand Land, Michigan, next door to Lucas’ grandparent’s cottage. Lucas grew up talking with Dave and Cindy about small sailboats on the lake. A few years ago, we discovered they had a cruising boat near Alaya at Toledo Beach Marina. Dave gave us some great advice for our Great Lakes cruising in 2023 and has kept tabs on our east coast travels. In January, Dave reached out to Lucas saying that he was going to be in Vero Beach all winter and invited us to meet up with him and Cindy if schedules worked out. He even let us ship some packages to their house. When we pulled into Fort Pierce on January 26, Lucas sent a text to Dave. He and Cindy met us for dinner that very night! We had a lovely time catching up with them and they enjoyed their first trip to Aldi while they kindly drove us for final provisioning. Thank you Dave and Cindy!!

The next morning, Wednesday, January 27, we printed out our new pre-passage checklist and started working on the list. First on the list was an oil change for Pierre. Lucas worked on that while I started a couple loads of laundry. On my way to start the laundry, I checked in with Ginny and Larry. They were planning to leave with us for the Bahamas the next morning. By the time I went to switch our washed clothes to the dryer, they had changed their minds and decided to leave within the hour! The weather window was evolving every hour and the forecast now looked most favorable for a Wednesday afternoon passage in the Gulf Stream. They were ready. Should we go with them? We really would have had to scramble to leave that day. We made the tough call to stick with our initial plan but it was hard to see our buddy boat leave without us. 

Lucas finished up the oil change and moved on to commissioning the watermaker. I worked through our customs, immigration and travel insurance registration. We got positive reports from SV Misty as they traveled through the stream. We finally finished our checklist of items in the dark but we were as ready as we could be. The next day, we were heading to the Bahamas!

Neither of us slept very well that night. The next morning, we topped off Alaya’s water tanks and then cast off the dock lines around 9 a.m., trying to time the tide right for exiting the inlet. As we exited, we received live reports about the Gulf Stream from Dave. He and his brother-in-law were out fishing in the stream that morning. He reported favorable conditions, with very little swell in the Atlantic. Full steam ahead then! Leaving Fort Pierce was scary and exhilarating. The next stop would hopefully be 30 hours later at Great Sale Cay in the Bahamas. 

We had a beautiful motor down the coast of Florida for the next 10 hours. Our tactic for crossing the stream was to point the bow of the boat due east, this would mean that would would be crossing the stream as quickly as possible. At its peak the stream will push us at three knots northward, we countered this by heading south down the Florida coast first and turning at a strategic point so that the stream would push us north exactly where we wanted to enter the bank. Our friends on SV Pokey were kind enough to share their track from last years crossing, with this data we were able to minimize our time spent in the stream and end up exactly where we wanted to. Due to the close proximity of the Gulf Stream to Florida’s coast, we kept within a mile of shore to stay out of the northbound current of the stream as we made our southing. 

About three hours into our passage, I saw a big splash out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t a dolphin splash but I had no idea what it could be. Slowly, we started seeing more of these random splashes all around us. We finally saw the culprit – rays! Tens of rays were jumping straight out of the water and splashing back. It was so cool! I could consistently see 5-6 splashes happening on the horizon everytime I did a scan. This went on for more than an hour. After a quick google search, I learned that scientists don’t really know why rays do this, it could be a mating ritual, fishing tactic or just jumping for fun. Whatever the cause, we really enjoyed the show.

As the sun began to set, we approached the Lake Worth/West Palm Beach inlet. This was our “turning left” spot, the furthest south we would go before heading east into the Gulf Stream. Again, it was exciting and scary to make that turn. There was no wind. The dark water and sky blended together to create a spooky effect. Even though we felt very small turning into the vast ocean, we were not alone, there were a dozen other sailboats heading across the stream at the same time. It was reassuring to know so many other boats picked the same weather window. One of these boats turned out to be some friends from Deltaville, Joanna and Stephan on SV Radiant Spirit.

I had strategically helmed all afternoon along the coast so that my shift ended around sunset. I sat up with Lucas while we turned left and then when it started to get a little rolly in the stream, I headed to bed. Lucas cautiously steered us into the abyss. There was no wind and the ocean was glassy. It wasn’t all smooth motoring though, every so often we would get smacked by a wave on our side. They were unlike any wave we have experienced before, they looked small from the cockpit but then they would get to us and knock us 30 degrees back and forth. I’d yell up from bed to make sure Lucas was ok and he would yell down that he was fine. The best Lucas could figure out was that the leftover 2ft swell out of the north would push us in one direction and then the northbound Gulf Stream current would catch our keel and push us back over in the other direction. It wasn’t unsafe but it was certainly off-putting. I was glad to be hanging out in our cozy bed for most of the rollercoaster ride.

Before any change in watch, we always discuss what animal sightings we want to be woken up for. That night, I only wanted to be woken up for Bioluminescence (or dolphins, of course). We had heard this phenomenon was possible in the Gulf Stream but we didn’t know what to expect. Lucas called me into the cockpit around 2 a.m. – Bioluminescence! It wasn’t the long streams of bioluminescence we had seen on YouTube but crackles of light as waves approached our stern. It was beautiful and totally worth getting out of bed. 

Lucas called me up again around 4 a.m. We were about to enter the Bahama Bank. The Bahama Bank is a wild piece of geology. The ocean is 1000s of feet deep between Florida and the Bahamas. The bank is 10-30 feet deep. The change in depth happens very quickly, a freaky thing to experience by boat, in the pitch black. Lucas and I watched as the depth sounder went from 800 feet to 30 feet in a matter of a minute or two. I wondered aloud if the water was Bahama blue yet, Lucas grabbed a flashlight. His flashlight beam revealed the bluest water Alaya has ever been in and a flying fish! We were officially in Bahamian water. As soon as we were on the bank, the sea state improved. After getting us safely across the stream, Lucas’ adrenaline finally ran out and he was able to get some sleep. I helmed through the early morning, enjoying my first beautiful Bahamian sunrise. 

We motored throughout the morning and early afternoon, heading for Great Sale Cay (pronounced Key in the Bahamas), one of the first protected anchorages on the western side of the bank. As we motored, we were just in awe of the water, it is just so freaking blue and clear.  We arrived at Great Sale around 2 p.m. There were already a few other cruising boats there, it is a popular stop over for boats transiting to and from the US. We laid our anchor for the first time in the crystal clear water and let out a big sigh of relief…we made it!! A few hours after our arrival Radiant Spirit pulled in and anchored near us. SV Misty joined the Deltaville anchoring party a few hours later, they had arrived safely to the Bahamas the day before we did and had already visited another island, cleared into customs and then came to Great Sale.

We don’t usually do much cooking while on passage, and our first trip across the Gulf Stream was no exception. I usually survive on Ritz crackers and dry cereal while underway and Lucas loves his PB&Js. By the time we anchored at Great Sale, it had been 30 hours since we had a real meal, so we were famished. I cooked up one of our favorites, spinach pesto pasta, and then we got suited up for our first swim. We stuck our toes in but totally chickened out – the water was chilly! We figured there was plenty of time to swim in the (hopefully) warmer water. Instead of swimming, we took hot showers in our amazing shower and lounged around the rest of the afternoon. Before we crashed into bed, we were treated to a rocket launch over our bow. What a first day in the Bahamas.