Warderick Wells

This vessel has seen better days

We are loving the Bahamas!  Hope you enjoy these pix!  This is shot looking out towards Nati when we were at Warderick Wells.  The remnants of a boat that didn't make it through a storm.

The Exumas Park Headquarters is on Warderick Wells.  It is just beautiful in every aspect. Here we decided to take a hike to put Nati's name on the Island.  So....up "Boo Boo Hill" we go......

View from Boo Boo Hill looking north

Pull up the pants!

Our sign before Anne worked on it

After we did some work with the Dremel and some paint we went up the hill and placed it along with hundreds of other boat signs.  It is the only place in the park that anything can be left from the cruisers.    The park is a "what you bring in...you take out" and NO trash disposal is allowed.

Nati's place in the Bahamas

The north mooring field

We have finally made it!

View to the west from Boo Boo Hill

Later in the day we decided to have a Happy Hour with our friends on Windward.  To make it different we decided to watch the sunset on a raft secured to a mooring ball.......Good friends, good cocktails and a lot of laughs!

The next day we took a dinghy ride over to the south mooring field to check it out.  We will remember this spot as it would be a good hiding place for a front coming through.  The moorings are big and the protection is 1st class.

White enough sand for you?

All I need is a pillow!

Happy New Years from the Exumas!

We are sorry for the delay on our updates but we have been without Internet since we have left Nassau.  At the moment we are at Staniel Cay and have limited coverage on Nati, hence this is only an interim update.

Our position:

N24.10.995
W076.27.486

The trip to here has been great. The weather has been warm and there has been lots of swimming.  So far we have been to Allan's Cay, Shroud Cay, Warderick Wells, Compass Cay, Halls Pond Cay and here at Staniel Cay.  The wind is howling and we would get soaked if we tried for shore so we have hanging out on Nati taking care of loose ends

Hoping we can get to town and do a more complete blog update tomorrow.  Stand by.......

Bahamas bound......

No Name Harbor is once again our jumping off point to head east.  We enjoyed a Hog Grouper dinner at the Boaters Grill which is right on the water and headed for an early night.  5:30am was going to come quick.

Nati in No Name Harbor

We pulled up the anchor at 0630 and was the fourth boat out heading towards the Gulf Stream.  Winds were light as we headed out but the forecast was for the breeze to pick up so we put a reef in the main and took off towards the Bahamas.  We had a number of boats with us......Kismet, Mutual Fun and Passages were traveling with us and there were more all around.  Maybe we picked a good window!

The "stream" was a bit choppy but Nati was liking the  wind and we soon caught up with everyone.  Still we were all having fun but.....wait there is another cat closing on us!  Ah.....they made the mistake of having their port engine on when they went by.....that is cheating!!

We crossed over on to the Bahamian Bank around 1330 and reported to Kismet that the "magic water" was still there!  Yes, it was beautiful.  We went from over 1,500 feet deep water to 20 in less than 5 minutes!!

We are on the "bank".

The bank crossing went smooth.  The seas were a little choppy but we continued to fly!  Later we actually slowed Nati down so we wouldn't get to Nassau too early.  The harbor is supposed to be busy and we didn't have a clue where we were going.  By 6am we could see the lights and we pulled into the harbor by 0930.  You have to actually call Nassau Harbor Control to get permission to enter.  Very interesting to do that for the first time.

We got a slip at the Nassau Harbor Club and got checked into Immigrations & Customs by early afternoon.  We gave Nati & ourselves a good washing down and had an early dinner via Domino's Pizza.  I fell asleep by 630pm.  Anne followed 45 minutes later.  

The crossing was great.  178 miles and we used less than 6 gallons of fuel, mostly coming into the harbor and the last 8 miles which were DDW (dead downwind).  Our top speed was over 9.5kts and we could have had our first 200 miles, 24 hour day if we didn't slow the girl down.  She was handling all the conditions without a fight.  

Later today we will head south towards the north end of the Exumas.  Who knows where we will spend New Years Eve??!!  No worries though.......it will be in the BAHAMAS!!

Going through the Nassau entrance

Kismet going past Atlantis

Merry Christmas

OK, this is more like it!

Christmas Eve was very nice down here in No Name Harbor.  We had a beautiful sunset, ahi for dinner and then Jim O and his son Jamie came over for desert......lots of laughs and a quiet night on the anchor.  We have a early dinner planned and then tomorrow we plan on heading across the gulf stream and into Bahamian waters....

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND FAIR WINDS.........

CHRISTMAS EVE IN NO NAME HARBOR

and now the waiting game begins

All is set to cross..........that is except for "mother nature".  Right now we are hanging out in the upper Keys to get away from Miami for a few days.  Yesterdays cold front took us down to Tarpon Basin (47miles) in about 6.5 hours.  We saw 30+ knots of wind but it was behind us so Nati just took us south.

Besides us, Kismet, Passages and Mutual Fun are hanging out waiting for a window to open up.  Maybe Wednesday??!!

Come on "Ma Nature"!!!!!!

Stuff to do

On the way north we decide to pull into Dinner Key for a night on the mooring to do laundry and make a run to West Marine.  The traveler line I bought last spring is really lousy so Nati gets a new line.  Also we have tons of laundry so the machines at the marina make it easy.......that is as easy as it can get.

Sunrise over Key Biscayne

We have slowly begun to replace our old light bulbs with new and efficient LED bulbs.  They are not hot to the touch and use virtually no power.  The new bulb in the cockpit used to use more that one amp and the new bulb uses one tenth of an amp!

old bulb

new LED vs the old one

LED light

One other job is now done also......WE ARE MAKING WATER!!  Yep, the Cape Horn Extreme from Spectra is up and running.  JT, the area rep for Spectra came out to check things out and gave us his blessing for a completed job......now drink up!!

In the meantime......all that south wind has disappeared and we have another front coming through.  Chris Parker says we have a 1 day window to cross.  None of us think a one day window, which has northeast to east winds in the forecast is a window.  So.............here we sit in Miami.  Maybe another run to Alabama Jacks is in order.

We are almost to Miami......

Since the winds continued to be out of the south (yes, when we don't want it to be...) we decide to make our way down to Ft Lauderdale and pull into Lake Sylvia for the night.  The next day's forecast is for west winds going NW so it should provide a good sail.  Into the lake we go and it is pretty full.  Of the 18 boats inside, 8 are catamarans!  The most we've seen all the way down so it was fun to have them all around us.  On top of that, one of the new Leopards ended up to be our friends on the new "Darius", a Leopard 39.  Last year they were on "old Darius", a beautiful Chatham 45.  Now that is a change!!

Darius

Lake Sylvia

So, the next day both Darius and Nati head out of Ft Lauderdale and had a good sail down to Miami.  It felt good to be back on the ocean.  Clean water, warm water and NO bridges to go under!

Going through Government Cut into Port Miami

Since it was time to make sure we are provisioned for the crossing we pulled into our favorite anchorage in South Beach......near Star Island.  Look who is there!  Kismet, Passages and Mutual Fun..... now we have neighbors!

Since the window to cross isn't anytime soon we decided to go down to Alabama Jacks for the "best conch fritters in the world"!  We had 3 days of good sailing .......... no engine noise for most of the trip.

our evening anchorage

heading to Alabama Jacks

now we are full.....food was great

Time to head back north.....things to do and places to visit.............