Done with the USA??
For the next 2 weeks having made the Florida Keys, we played with family and made our final preparations for leaving the USA, to head to Bahamas. Also, having been an advanced scuba diver in earlier years, Heather did a refresher course and took advantage of the wonderful diving that was all around the Keys, seeing sea turtles, gentle nurse sharks, a massive Hammerhead shark and mainly just getting used to being underwater again.
We took the kids snorkeling as we traveled through the Keys, stopping at a snorkel site where we took a mooring ball for an hour or so. The kids did so well, they hadn’t even snorkeled before besides in a pool, and they were so excited to see all the fish that we had longed talked about. It was relatively choppy for their first time but felt like a real tick in the box to have finally done it!
We also went to the sanr bar that was exposed at low tide near the anchorage in Tavernier, where we found beautiful conch shells and sand dollars finally, for Bethan’s ever growing shall collection. Oscar and Annabelle finally cracked out the Tiwal and had some great fun getting their dinghy legs back again in the anchorage. We had some pretty big winds come through but the anchor held well, despite the almost 360 degree circle we had done in the week or so we sat preparing there.
We met another boat in our anchorage in Tavernier who was also looking to cross, found ourselves to be like minded in terms of risk profile for the journey, they had 2 great kids on board and so we begin to watch the weather even more closely, and wait for the window to cross the Gulf Stream and finally get to the Bahamas.
We provisioned and provisioned, until we felt the boat and the fridges could take no more - its hard to suddenly realize that you are not sure when you are coming back to the US and think of all the things you might need therefore!! We also had daily nature hunts for the local iguana population in the mangroves around town, there were in varying stages of maturity hence their different colors but were a sight to behold!
And finally we did it - leaving Tavernier Key at midnight, we motored up the Hawk Channel to rende-vous with our buddy boat at 4am who were anchored further north, and together navigated the reef of the Keys, and entered the Gult stream! Got a little rolly for a while but the kids slept through so peacefully, they were so beautiful, and soon we gained 2 knots of speed as we angled our bows for the Bahamas, so exciting to finally be doing this! We motored all the way as we didn’t want to take any chances of getting in too late and the weather window closing, but it was a peaceful passage, only punctuated by the huge cargo and cruise ships that occasionally crossed our bows in the distance.
