After our return to Palm Beach, Ben and I were keeping our eyes on the forecast for the crossing over to The Bahamas. Marv's Weather was the one we'd been watching, waiting for an ideal day to head east. It looked like Friday or Saturday would be the best days in the coming weeks, so we had some time to do laundry and hang out with my parents at my aunt and uncle's house. (Shout out and HUGE thank you to these two 💕 for their hospitality, cars and gasoline, shopping excursions, and food preparations for us throughout the ENTIRE trip this summer!!!!)
It was around 7 AM when I was jolted awake on Thursday with Ben telling me we had to leave right then and there or wait until after the weekend to see if the forecast would favorably change. It was at this moment that I was grateful for the quick trip to the boat that Ben and I had made the day prior to unload and put away all of our groceries in preparation for our trip. I shoved all of our clean laundry from the dryer into trash bags, gathered up anything that belonged to us- shoving things in random bags and compartments, and loaded us all into the cars to head to the dock. If we'd forgotten anything, I knew we'd be back in 2 weeks.
We got on the boat, lifted the anchor (which was quite the task upon our arrival just a few days earlier), fueled up, and ventured out east, into the Atlantic Ocean. The waves were 1-2 feet and the smallest height forecasted for the foreseeable future. Thinking back to our Dry Tortugas 3-5 feet waves, I figured it would be easy. About an hour into our journey, I looked at Ben and asked, "Are we doing the wrong thing? Are we going just so we can stay longer, even if it isn't the best choice?"
He replied, "Well, we're about halfway there, so we can continue on and wind up at West End, or turn around and go back. I don't know if we will make it to the Bahamas this summer if we turn back."
What did we do? You guessed it. We kept on trucking (...or boating). Knowing we had the same distance to cover either way, it would be silly to turn around at that point. We did it before, we could do it again. The cherry on top was that the kids were happily watching movies together in the cabin and no one threw up!
Once we docked, we had to check-in and do customs paperwork (is it still called paperwork if it is online?) in West End. Knowing that only the captain was allowed off the boat while completing the customs process, the kids and I stayed on the boat. Thinking of the other times we'd completed this upon arrival in other countries, I anticipated it taking 30 minutes or less.
Ben walked back and forth to customs no less than 4 times before the process was done. When he initially got to the customs office, he was told there were no papers to fill out, that it had to be done online, but it couldn't be done yet because we didn't have the right wireless network. He had to purchase a data plan from ALIV, so he could come back to the boat and set up the new network for the very repetitive and tedious process of checking in 5 family members.
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| It was not our boat's first time with a Bahamian sunset, but it was her first one as Cartermaran. |
By the time all of that was done (about FOUR hours later), it was bedtime for the kids. I put them to bed, then met Ben outside on the dock. I had heard rumblings of a shark in the water from other people at our dock and I wanted to see it, but our underwater lights were not fully set up yet. Ben recalled this was something the previous owner had started, but Ben was going to finish at some point this summer. From then on, my goal was to find a shark close enough to our boat to see it- either in the daytime or at night with our lights.
We washed down the boat and prepared for our first full day in the Bahamas- cruising to Great Sale Cay in the Abacos.
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