It's Better in the Bahamas 25◦43'.487N 079◦17'.863W Bimini Island

We're here and it was a wonderful crossing. We set out this morning with 5 other boats. Yesterday Jim Sr and Sharon from "Blue Angel" went out to Angle fish creek and set some bread crumbs on the GPS to allow us to leave before daylight this morning. Roger and Mary from "Ta Ta" did the same when they arrived at Pumpkin island yesterday. So this morning before daylight, we all set out through this creek to the great wide ocean. We were six boats, so with "Ta Ta" in the lead, "BamADream" and "Avalon" followed. Then "Blue Angle" with their bread crumbs and "Priorities" and finally Jim and I in last place. We felt very protected. As the largest boat in this flotilla, going through some very narrow and shallow channels we had a whole fleet of boats looking out for us. "Ta Ta" going to Port, "Blue Angle" going to starbord and  "Priorities" down the center of the channel. All of them reporting depths to us in play by play fashion, ensuring we did not hit bottom....again. There was a couple of go fast fishing boats who were too impatient to wait for our flotilla  to get through the channel and one of them in particular threw us a very large wake. Being so big and the channel so narrow, we could not adjust our course to take the waves on the bow, so we got rocked pretty badly. After calling him some choice names (I can't put them in print) we did make it out of the channel safely and by then the sun was coming up so we could now see well enough to separate. 

Sunrise over the Atlantic ocean 

We went from a low of 5 feet deep to 90 feet of water to 2000 feet of water. No worries about hitting bottom on the Atlantic!

Priorities in the sunrise 

During our crossing Jim decided to do some fishing, but driving and fishing can be a bit tricky, so he McGivered his fishing pole. He caught nothing but we did lose a lure. Trolling at 8 miles per hour is probably not the best way to catch fish, but every boat in our flotilla tried! Check out the color of the water here. It's mesmerizing! 

Jim's fishing pole tied up to the boat 

We arrived at Bluewater Harbor at around 3 in the afternoon. When clearing into Bahamas only the captain is aloud off the boat until we are cleared by customs. By the time all was said and done, we had dinner and then the 12 of us gathered on our Lido deck for the champagne opening. We opened the bottle of Veuve Clicquot that was given to us as a gift from Doug and Janice. It was delicious guys, thanks again. I would love to show you pictures but alas the sun had gone down and I have no flash on the video camera. So just take my word for it.

We are leaving here tomorrow to make our  way to Lucaya or Bullocks Harbor, We have not decided yet. We do need to get to somewhere where the water is a bit less expensive. It's 75cents per gallon here and that is US funds so that's almost a dollar per gallon Canadian by the time you add exchange rate + service charges and the automatic 3% surcharge to use a credit card in the Bahamas. Our 300 gallon tanks will be pretty expensive to fill, so ...no thanks. We also need to get to Marsh harbor before February 2^nd because that's when Liane and Bob fly in. That is 150 miles from here, so we have to hit the road while the weather is good. Looks like tomorrow is the only nice day for the next 5 days so, off we go

A demain mes ami. Good night all. 

Cloudy skies