Saturday, February 11, 2012 (Friday continued and we're HeRe :)

2:30am 26*38.184 x 79*25.972 Waves have grown and we’re making good speed through the water sometimes going better than 8 knots. Winds have shifted from SW to W and increased.

Twilight aboard the washing machine/Mr Toad’s great adventure ride.

We had some rain throughout the night and saw quite a bit of lightening in the distance. None of the lightening made it our way thank goodness. Poor Wayne was sick all night, but with the decrease in the wash machine action he went down to see if he could sleep some in the main cabin. It was hard I’m sure, but with his little bucket in hand, if it gets too bad below he can always use the bucket then run back up top. I can see the lights of Freeport and the freighters in the distance. Time to play dodge the freighters around Freeport.

Poor little Guy :(

We caught our first fish of the season. I noticed in the twilight 4 little corpses lying on our deck. Sometime during the night flying fish decided to visit us and stay. Wayne’s been curious if we’d ever get any on deck. We always hear of others finding flying fish on deck but we’ve never had any until now. Pretty little creatures. I’m sad that they found their end on our deck. Especially since we have no cats to take advantage of their gift of life to our boat.

7:25am 26 31.101x 78 38.185 morning and no coffee… Wayne’s still sleeping, I can see him from the companionway; It’s good to see him sleeping – it was a long night of the seasick blues for him. What a trooper… We’re not far from our destination now. We were going to try and go into Ocean Reef but couldn’t clear into customs there. We’d heard nothing but nice things about the place from Maggie (Guinevere) and Pam (Blue Pearl) but while talking to them yesterday via phone, they didn’t sound to user friendly so I’d called the Grand Bahama Yacht Club and they were expecting us around 2pm… It looks like we could be there in an hour. I thought Mary might have her Bahamas phone and radioed her to see if she’d like to call and see if we could come in early. High tide is at 10:45am here so we could catch the rising tide coming in (a good thing since Azaya has a 6.5’ draft). She radioed them and it was “no problem mon”. We pulled in and were docked at 9:30am. We made incredible time. The winds and currents were running with us (we actually had speeds of 8.5 knots at times and winds of 30-36knots). 13.5 hours from anchor to dock time.

Fabian was here to help us dock and give us our paperwork. I’d forgotten how much paper work there is. We got it filled out and they ferried us over to the Customs and Immigration office. I was wondering if the Customs agent with the beautiful signature was still there. He wasn’t. I guess they transfer them around so no beautiful signature for my passport. I love coming in here – the people in Customs/Immigration are very friendly. I can think of some other places that could emulate the style they use here. Firm but friendly… We got 90 days. Azaya wanted 180 but were told 90 was the max and that all they needed to do was to come back to any office to have another 90 days added on without having to pay the $300 entry fee. We were told that if we left but came back within a 90 day period that we didn’t have to pay the fee. That was good to know for future reference.

After clearing in Customs, the 4 of us (Mary, Axel, Wayne and I) decided that since none of us had eaten since leaving the US it was time for some dinner – laughing…we were just past breakfast time and it was now just lunch time (11:30am). I remembered that last year the place we went to had great food and good prices so we went back there (Le Med). Just missed breakfast so Mary and I got cracked conch, Axel got Lobster pasta and Wayne got snapper. Fries or rice and peas, vegiis and a wonderful salad, with lemonade, iced tea, soft drinks or wine was included in the price. At $12.95 a person, there was no way I could make the amount of food we got for the cost. Wonderful. What was even more wonderful was noting that from the time we came out of the Customs office to going over to the restaurant the winds were growing stronger from the north. Our timing was wonderful. We’d made it in early and missed being out in “worse” weather!
After our dinner/lunch/breakfast, we caught a van back to the marina and it is now nap time… First I need to email that we made it here safely, then sleep and I will clean up the mess in the cabin tomorrow…
Hmmm having trouble sending my email… will try again later after a nap…

Success…

Now for a longggggg nap…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…