Abacos Day 1

Well we started our day with the most pleasant ride to the Bahamas. We departed our slip at precisely 6:20 AM and through the Jupiter Inlet by 6:30 AM. We were elated to find the ocean as calm as we've ever seen and were able to cruise at 22 knots all the way to West End, Bahamas. We arrived in a mere 2 hours and 50 minutes, refueled ($5.86/gal), cleared Customs and Integration and were ready to head to the Ginn Sur Resort pool by 10:15. We are truly amazed how close we are to this tropical paradise. The remainder of our group of 9 boats arrived approximately one hour later and met us at the pool around 1:30 PM. What an awesome day lounging around, bike riding and just enjoying life with our boating friends. We are currently preparing to leave Wonderfun and join the group on the MarineMax 58' Sedan Bridge for a "Docktail" party. My wife prepared a nice little crab dip as our favorite appetizer and I am truly ready to hang out with our friends again.

 

Until next time

 

M

Abacos Preparations

Well it's finally here, we are within a week of taking our 10 day trip to the Abacos. We are traveling to West End on Wednesday and staying at Old Bahama Bay Resort for the night. We will then motor to Green Turtle Cay Thursday morning and docking at Green Turtle Yacht Club. The trip will take approximately 5.5 hours and we will stay through Saturday morning whereupon we will travel to Guana Cay and dock at Guana's Orchid Bay marina. This trip will only take two hours and we will stay on this Cay until Monday. Monday morning we travel to Elbow Cay and visit Hope town. I can't wait to visit this cay, I really want to see this place. It is described as the best of the Bahamas. We stay at Hopetown through Wednesday (8/6)…We head for Marsh Harbour which is only 4 miles from Hope town. We stay at Marsh Harbor until Friday at 9am and we head back north to Spanish cay which will take about 2 hours. We only stay one night at Spanish Cay and depart the next morning at 9AM and travel back to West End…about a 5 hour trip. We are so excited and can't wait to get under way!

Our plan is to go to Costco this weekend and purchase the bulk of our supplies…water, coffee and beer. We don't really drink that much beer, but it seems as though we host a lot of people when we are at our slip. We actually paid $67 dollars for a case of Bud Lite when we were in Bimini and learned our lesson quickly to always bring extra "provisions" when in the Bahamas. We are currently authoring our list of meals during the trip…mostly steak, chicken and hotdogs…Our freezer section is so small that we can only take a small supply for such a long journey, so I guess we'll have to eat at the local restaurants…Yeah!!! Don't get me wrong, I love grilling on the boat, but the fresh seafood in the islands is absolutely out of this world. Most restaurants require you to make reservation in the morning and decide what you want so they can catch your desired dish…How awesome is that! Anyway, we are taking a few filet mignons, chicken breasts and a couple of packages of hotdogs. The last time we rafted up in Lucaya at Petersen Cay we fed three boats full of people. It was so much fun having everyone enjoying a surprise lunch!

Until next time,

Mike

Goodyear Blimp

Well summer is here and my girls are here visiting for a couple of weeks. They were visiting their grandparents in South Carolina and this year I decided to fly them instead of doing the meet me half way. After calculating the time and fuel costs for all involved, I felt it was more efficient to fly. They returned on Saturday and I picked them up at the Fort Lauderdale airport around 11:45. We left the airport and made our way to I-95 for the hour long journey back to our home. Along the way the weather tuned stormy and it became very hazardous near Hollywood Florida. We noticed that flying near the coast was the Goodyear blimp and we decided to take a detour to watch, what we thought, the blimp mooring. So we took a quick exit and proceeded to make our way to the airfield to find a good vantage point to observe the procedure. We found the perfect spot and continued watching the blimp weave it's way back and forth up and down until we realized that the blimp was not coming any closer to the landing facility. We finally gave up and made our way back to I-95 to find the weather clear and the traffic calming significantly. However, we were delayed a little while longer due to a serious wreck….I guess the Goodyear diversion may have been our lucky break.

 

Until next time,

 

Mike