We made it! 🇧🇸

After pouring over the forecast, we made the call to leave Thursday morning.  We planned to pop out, use the north wind to get south some, then turn east when the north wind dropped, and have a lovely cruise in 2-4’ seas.  Here’s what really happened—the north wind was a good “+5” and as we headed out seas were hitting us on the quarter in the solid 6-8’ range.  The swells were impressive.  But we were keeping up great speed and the forecast was still for everything to lay down as the day went on.  As I was resting on my “off” watch they called me up on deck to discuss.  It was rough!  We decided to gybe and head south again and reassess in an hour or so.  By noon, the whole family voted to turn east and tough it out for a few hours in the stream.  We were enjoying the fact that we didn’t have to motor!  

Everyone was holding on and doing quite well.  Trent even read a whole book!  At 1400 we were solidly in the Gulf Stream so we launched a message in a bottle with our info, date/time/location of drop, and a note from K.  The Captain had worked hard over the previous few days to provide the Russel’s Reserve bottle.


After the Stream, it was a pretty straightforward trip.  We eventually lost the wind and had to motor part of the way.  Watching the changing depths and water colors was magical!  Photos just don’t do it justice.  On a rising tide we made our approach to the cut into Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands.  The entrance is literally a cut in the limestone and we were excited about this cool arrival.  We were NOT excited when we were in the cut and saw another boat heading for it to exit on AIS.  It did not respond to hails and soon we saw a huge catamaran turn the corner at a pretty good clip.  We are depth-limited and had to stay in the middle—this was not going to work!  We blew our air horn repeatedly but they came anyway.  The catamaran hit its rigging on trees overhead, gave us a thumbs-up, and was off.  Holy. Crap.

The cut, right before we got company!

But then, we were here!  The staff tied us up and called customs and immigration to the boat.  The entire arrival was over in less than an hour.  And it was a great birthday present for Swab!

We placed our order for the marina’s “chill and grille” event that night and ventured out to see the beach on the other side of the island (and had cranky kids because we didn’t have time to snorkel, too).  After that trip (and honestly, some momma frustration from the cranky kids), I set to trying to bake a birthday cake for the boy while Frank hung Christmas lights.  Talk about a busy day!  

Beach!

Chill and Grille

Happy Birthday!

This is our home for the next week and so far it looks like it’s going to be a great week!