2007.01.07

After an absolutly brilliant crossing we are safely tucked in at West End on Grand Bahama Island...

The journey started at 0300 on a moonlit night ...there were about seven boats leaving at the same time ...I guess everybody had listened to weather guru Chris Parker the day before and we knew we had that "window" for a perfect crossing.

It was a bit rough and choppy going out through the Palm Beach inlet but the seas soon smoothed out to about 4 to 6 feet !!!...I surprisingly do not have any bruises from banging into everything every time I walked around the cabin.... David the brave skipper was at the helm the whole time, except when nature called and I went to relieve him as he did likewise...

I, of course, immediately put on the auto pilot which did a wonderful job of keep ing us on course (much better than I could!) but David is an old fashioned mariner and he just likes to do it the way he did it at sea last century... even though he had to admit that James (our auto pilot) does a "pretty decent job"!
David was in heaven... but i will let him tell you about that himself.

My only other achievement was to attach a tether to my life jacket and the other side to a jack line (there are 2 which run the lengh of the boat on each side) and go forward to bring down the American flag since we no longer were in US water.

The seas further calmed down and we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise at sea around 0700... it was absolutly magical to see nothing but water in all directions... I must admit I had been a little bit apprehensive the evening before as we were getting everything ready for that early start...night sailing...offshore passage...no land in sight....crossing the mighty Gulf Stream... those were first for me but I have all the faith in the world in David's expertise and our wonderful Soli is quite well equipped with all kinds of electronics... but you know how it is, you can have equipment failure so I took a position every half hour which I logged then plotted on the chart with dividers and parallel rulers and could see that we were making a staight bee line for our destination, we were right on course for West End .

When the sun was up we saw lots of little flying fish... they are absolutly amazing they just fly out of the water and flap their little wings and go a good long way...probably to get away from a larger one who wants them for breakfast....I had never seen them before, unfortunately I could not get them on camera as they are too small.

Then all of a sudden at 1100 Hawkeye says "land ho" ....blind me could not even see it with binoculars!!! but I soon could... a few tiny palm trees growing out of the ocean... imagine that ...we had found our island and it was just where it was supposed to be...

Up went the yellow "Q" quarantine flag and by 1300 we were entering this most wonderful "Bahamian blue" harbour.

We were greeted by this nice young man, Kyle, who needs to teach me how to tie to a pylon as I still don't know how and could not reach the top of one to throw a rope around even if I knew how!!! I have never felt so short in my life as on this trip... I wonder if traveling with taller women such as Jacqueline and Louise has anything to do with it.

This morning David got into the dinghy and did a marvellous job on Soli's hull.... she has worked so hard for us and deserved a lot of TLC ... we then went to the beach and proceeded to enjoy a "few" rum punches as a trio was playing some raggaemusic at the bar... it could be paradise if not for those horrible NOSEEUMS!!!

Look what's on David's thigh.... Heinz says it's very good luck!!!

A little hermit crab came to visit...guess he wanted to meet the lucky guy!!!

PS for CJ ..... I ran into a guy named John Revolta yesterday on the dock... he is making a film here .....he wanted to be remembered to you... but I told him you were taken so he was SOL... first it was Roy Dupuis in Willsboro and now John in West End ...are you sure you would not rather be sailing????