Crossing the Great Bahamas Bank

We said Goodbye to Browns Marina at 6 am on Thursday and started out on the next leg of our journey. Crossing the Great Bahamas Bank, a large body of water that is shallow and needs careful navigation. This trip is to long to get across and through the Northwest Channel during the amount of daylight that is available during this time of year so the plan was to spend the night on the Bank as close as possible (outside the shipping lanes, Kinda a boat highway) as possible and transit the tricky Northwest Channel early the next morning.

Leaving Bimini at Day Break Thursday November 8th

Mackie Shoal, One of our waypoints on this trip,Just a big stick out in the open water with no land in sight!

Sunset on the Great Bahama Bank

The darker it got the more the boat jerked and swung at anchor. This was very disconcerting since I was already a little paranoid about getting run down by some tanker on autopilot with the Captain asleep at the wheel.I had numerous solar walkway lights like you see in the pic. all over the boat to help make it visible. After about three hours Freddie had had enough. We weighed anchor and slowly made our way into the inky blackness towards the Northwest Channel Marker. A little after midnight we were approaching the marker which was another unlit stick ( I guess there was a stick we never saw one. We were just worried that we would hit it in the dark since the charts said to make sure not to go to far to the North or South of the marker or you would end up striking coral or a wreck in the shallows surrounding the passage.) It was not advised to transit this passage without prior experience at night. We had seen lights from another ship go through ahead of us and not heard a Mayday and there was a boat off to our port(left) that we thought we would slow down and follow close behind through. Next thing we were being hailed on the radio and the ship to our port was our friends from Canada we had met at Browns Marina in Bimini. They had left Bimini after we did that morning. They were hailing thee boat to let us know were planning to watch us go through and follow behind just like we had planned. In the dark they had no idea who it was until they hailed us. We ended up talking each other through the passage. I can't tell you how comforting it is to here a friendly voice as you are undertaking something that literally terrifies you. They ended up heading off toward Chub Cay to find anchorage and we headed on down to New Providence Island (you know it as Nassau) since it was around 2:30 in the morning and we could make landfall a little after noon. I wasn't interested in tackling anything else in the dark! Although the stars are beautiful I am so over these night passages.

We chose Lyford Marine to rest our weary bones. Sean Connery is suppose to live here so if I see him I will tell him Hi for you.

It is 6 :30 pm and dark so it is time to go to sleep now my 1 and 1/2 hours of sleep from yesterday just weren't enough.

Fair winds, We are off to the Exumas tomorrow morning.