Spanish Wells, Eleuthera, Bahamas

   

Another night and morning - light winds but the sails helped a little....more ship traffic.

 

Another sunset at sea, they all run together as I quickly get a little weird feeling when doing overnight sailing. 

 

 

And at least 5 cruise ships during the night - wow, that's a popular sport!  They passed within about 1 mile of us as we were directly in the shipping lane.

 

 

We arrived mid-day to Spanish Wells and put up our yellow quarantine "Q" flag until  we could clear customs.

 

As usual, gathered our boat documents and passports, having filled out most of the paperwork online.  Took the dinghy in to the customs office at the public dock.

Some rules have changed this year - long story but we ended up having to go back to the anchorage, retrieve the "big boat" and take it to the government dock for an inspection by the customs officer.  This is the first time we have been boarded by a Bahamian official.  No worries, it was professional and quick.  We then had to wait for an immigration officer for about 3 hours.  But no problems - we received our immigration stamps in our passports with 120 days before we have to renew.  Glad that process is over for a while!

Changed the "Q" flag to the Bahamian courtesy flag.  Will keep an eye on this new flag over the coming months - the harsh sun and winds tend to wear them out pretty quickly!

Back to the anchorage - beautiful calm sunset.  Early night as we didn't get the relaxing afternoon we'd planned due to the customs delays.

And a beautiful day is in store for us today!  Hard to believe this is a normally very busy anchorage...we're a little early this year so we'll see how things progress as the weeks go by.

Offshore near Grand Bahama

 Pleasant end to the day traveling just offshore. I believe this was just north of West Palm Beach right at Sunset  

It was a very busy night with five different cruise ships and several tankers and cargo ships. The stretch always keeps you on your toes because there are lots of buoys and traffic that is difficult to maneuver around in the pitch black.

Sunrise approaching Grand Bahama  

There is a huge Oil depository on Grand Bahama.  Strangely, one of the world’s largest.

And quite a few tankers lined up to go into port.  With decent winds, we’ve decided to head on to Spanish Wells to check in.

Offshore, FL - Bahamas

 Thought I’d get a couple of pictures up before we got too far offshore. I don’t like to use a lot of data when we’re past 12 miles offshore because we have to pay for it extra!

Leaving Vero Beach

Approaching Fort Pierce.

Out the inlet at Fort Pierce  

Put all the sales up, even though there’s not a huge amount of wind. The gym went up flawlessly so very pleased so far.

I saw this yellow, floating structure, surrounded by some buoys on the chart. I looked it up and it is from a company called. Oneka.  They are apparently a research company for wave power. Interesting.

Vero Beach, FL

We had one last load of laundry to do - much easier to just do it at the marina laundrette than haul 15 gallons of water to the boat for our onboard machine....so we put the clothes in and took a 30 minute walk to spend the time before transferring the clothes to the dryer.  I know, mundane.  But so nice to wander the neighborhood in the warm temperatures.

Enjoying the Florida flora.

Mid-day Tracy on Phoenix Rising (was Gypsy/Oasis) arrived at the marina.  That makes 6 Mantas at Vero.

 The last thing we were waiting on before heading to the Bahamas was a new tablet for me.  My old 7 year old Samsung tablet just wasn't cutting it on the way south.  The navigation programs just weren't working on it this year (I think the apps have been upgraded and needed faster processors/memory).  Anyhooo, we ordered a new one from Amazon and were waiting on it to be delivered.  The trusty FedEx tracking said it was "out for delivery".  By 2:30PM it changed to Cancelled - Customer Refused Delivery.  We checked with the marina office and they said that FedEx had not made a delivery at all that day....so we have no idea what happened.  But, Walmart to the rescue!  They delivered the tablet in about 45 minutes for a $10 fee - amazing!

Last thing of the evening was a nice get-together for Manta folks - Phoenix Rising, Charm, Bilancia, Moonraker, Sojourn and Galileo were in attendance.  Lots of boat discussions and future plans discussed.  

We will be heading south now and will be eventually pointing east towards Great Harbour, Bahamas now.  We should have Starlink active the whole way but will limit usage since it's $$ when we're offshore past 12 miles from land.  You can follow along, of course.  Spot tracker  click on 24 hrs for a good view.

Vero Beach, Fl

 Ed and Cathy invited the Sojourn and Charm crews over for a sort of "farewell" dinner.  Ed and Cathy are heading to the Key West area to moor the boat there for the winter before putting it up for sale.  They'll be moving onto land!  We will miss their camaraderie!!  But we'll see them from time to time either at their new place in Charleston or maybe at Pittsboro or Oriental in their RV adventures, who knows?  We wish them the very best and it's hard to see a bit of an era come to an end!🧡🧡

And at 10pm we got a text from a fellow cruiser reminding us that there was a rocket launch.....apparently we are close enough at Vero Beach to have a really good view.  A few minutes into the launch, we could even hear a bit of the "rumble" as sound waves finally found us.

Vero Beach, Fl

 After another very chilly night, we were up with the sun to head about 40 miles south to Vero Beach.

 

Always fun to see the birds perched on the bridge structures.  Funny how they seem to favor one side and completely ignore the other side. 

A brave and sporty fisherman out on the chilly/windy ICW.

Several hours later, getting close to Vero Beach - noticeably "pricier" abodes...

Back to the familiar dock at Vero Beach Municipal Marina.  Checked in and picked up a few Amazon packages I had shipped there.  Chris and Dean on Charm had already picked up our new jib sail that had arrived UPS earlier in the morning.

Ed and Cathy were already here - we had a nice chat with them floating on our dinghies.

We retrieved out jib sail from Charm and spent a while fitting it on Sojourn.  A couple of minor issues but it will work well for the season.  We might have to have a change made when we get back to NC but we're not going to let it hold us up.   Sail looks beautiful.

Lovely sunset in the marina - warmer temps but still just a little chilly.

Cocoa Village, Fl

 Brrrr, it’s chilly!

I used the propane stove as much as I could. Made a big pot of chili and cornbread. And we’re running low on sandwich bread so I made my first loaf of the season. I used one of my pre-vacuum sealed packets and it worked wonderfully!  I had wrapped the yeast in plastic wrap to keep it fresh, so all I had to do was shake that out add water and 3 tablespoons of oil. I’m gonna enjoy not having to take out all the different ingredients.  We both of course, had a hot slice, with Earth Balance and a drizzle of honey.  Yum!

I used my new bread slicer for the first time. The old one gave up the ghost last year. Pretty pleased with this one. It disassembles, so easy to store, relatively

View out the salon window at sunset.  

Cocoa Village, FL

 We had a great visit with our son Robert and his girlfriend Taylor. Since there was absolutely nowhere that we could safely type the dinghy and go ashore, we just opted for visiting on the boat. Duane went over to the public boat ramp and picked them up.  

They had been with a big group of friends in Orlando at a music festival, so it was nice that they were just an hour away from Cocoa.  

We had a really nice long visit over lunch, catching up. They’re actually going back to Orlando to spend a cold windy day at Universal Studios. Maybe the cold will keep the crowds away, they don’t seem to mind the cold too much.  I drove the dingy for the first time this year to take them back to the boat ramp. I’m a little rusty!  

Cocoa Village, Fl

 We made the short 10 mile run south to Cocoa Beach....we usually are able to tie up to the public dock and enjoy visiting the town.  But the docks were damaged in 2022 by Hurricane Nicole so that wasn't an option.

We did take the dinghy over to the dock to inspect.  There really isn't a safe place to tie up the dinghy still.  The docks still exist, but they are just floating with no walkways to allow you to go ashore.  We'll have to figure something else out for Robert's visit tomorrow.  Windy but warm so far.  

We were on the lookout for the Blue Origin rocket to launch during the day - we're still close enough to get a good view.  After several postponements during the day, the liftoff was finally scrubbed due to weather.  We'll hang here to visit Robert and get a decision made about our jib sail repair/replacement.  The next few nights will be very chilly - about 41

$0\; degrees$

°F!