Chapter 82: The One Where We Become Expats

I mean, I guess we’re expats? An expatriate is someone who lives outside their home country. We live on our boat and now our boat is in a foreign country, so…

Anyway, we finally exited Stage East. After spending 2 1/2 weeks watching super yachts and lurking around the fabulously wealthy in West Palm Beach, we got our s**t together and set out. Sunday morning at 4 AM we weighed anchor and headed east, across the Gulf Stream, to The Bahamas. The Gulf Stream is sort of a pain. It is a 40 mile wide band of water that sweeps northward off the east coast of Florida. So, if we want to go to a point directly east, we can’t just point the boat east and take off because the Gulf Stream, like a giant people mover, sweeps us north. And we can’t head southeast, because then we are fighting the current, which runs about 3.5 mph, which means we spend even longer in the Stream and wind up…further north. The trick is to start heading east and then edge just a little south until boat speed starts to suffer. Then, once clear of the Stream, we figured out how far north we got carried and headed south to where we wanted to be in the first place. FUN! Anyway, we sailed (okay, motored) throughout the day Sunday and were officially “offshore” for the first time ever-out of sight of land. We arrived at West End, Bahamas at about 2 PM, where we cleared into the country through customs, fueled up, and then set out for The Berries, which is an island chain about 60 miles southeast. The fun part was that for this part of the trip, the current was working FOR us, so we got a little extra speed. That was pretty much the only fun part. We left West End about 4 PM and finally arrived at Great Harbour Cay (pronounced “key”) in The Berry Islands at 9:30 AM this morning. First of all, the trip took 30 hours and there was very little sleep. Second, we discovered that Freeport in The Bahamas is the largest oil depot in the western hemisphere, which means that huge ships are all over the place. And, since they only go in and out of the port during daylight, many of them just sit and drift all night. Third, you know all those ads for cruises to The Bahamas? That’s for real. There are a LOT of cruise ships all over the place. Fourth, weather. This was a lesson in how even with the excellent forecasting now available, it’s still possible to get caught out. For several hours in the middle of the night, we were surrounded by squalls and thunderstorms with 30 mph winds. That was definitely NOT in the forecast! Fortunately, we managed to avoid the squalls (thank you, radar!). Unfortunately, the entire boat is covered in salt water spray. Fifth and finally, there was the motoring. Did we sail? Nope. The wind was directly against us the entire time, except when it was blowing 30. On the upside: the engine worked great!

And here we are. We live on our boat. Our boat is in The Bahamas. Now what? GOOD QUESTION! Now we figure out the whole cruising thing: where to go next, how to get there, how to monitor the weather, where to get provisions, fuel, and propane. How to manage making water, and electricity. How to do laundry. And, we hope, how to explore new places and experience new cultures and people (OOH! Anthropology!). It’s been a long road to get here. Hopefully NOW we can actually have an adventure!