How to prepare for a cruising trip to the Bahamas – Provisioning – What should you take with you – The best weather and strategies for the Gulf Stream crossing – Our experience of the Gulf Stream crossing – Arrival to Bimini – How to check in to the Bahamas.
One thing that living on a boat is famous for: inability to plan. We need to go when the wind is right and the wind dictates the direction. So, as I am writing this, I don’t know which islands we are going to visit, or how long we will stay. I don’t know what we’ll have an opportunity to explore and what we will be able to experience. This makes our upcoming trip even more exhilarating: a true adventure!
Update: we have a great and exciting itinerary: Bimini, Berry Islands, Nassau and the Exumas, including Black Point and Warderick Wells.
Some facts about Bahamas:
| Capital: Nassau |
| Currency: Bahamian dollar (US dollars are widely accepted 1:1) |
| Official Language: English (Creole is widely spoken as well) |
| Independence from the United Kingdom: 10 July 1973 |
| Driving Side: left |
| Total Area: 5.358 sq miles (13.878 sq km) – 28% water |
| Population: 391,232 (2016 estimate) |
Preparation and Provisioning
One thing that is an absolute must-have for those who aspire a Bahamas sailing trip is one book: The Explorer Charts. They come in three parts: “Near Bahamas”, “Exumas and the Ragged Islands” and “Far Bahamas and Turks&Caicos”.
Buy Explorer Charts on Amazon:
No matter how good the other books are, there is simply nothing on the market that combines loads of useful information with extremely detailed marine charts.
You might ask: why would we even have paper charts when we have several digital sources? Yes, we have Garmin Blue Charts and Navionics, but we discovered that we consult the Explorer paper charts all the time, especially when we plan a passage. This is simply because you cannot zoom out far enough on any digital device to see the whole crossing or even a passage from island to island and still get detailed depth information. Plus, there are tons of tips about each island and even useful names and phone numbers.
Food and Drink: Cruisers say that everything is expensive in Bahamas, so make sure you take as much as you can with you! No one checks what you actually bring in, and as long you use it by yourself, it constitutes “Ship Stores” – this is the only thing you have to write in the customs declaration when asked what you are bringing into the country.
You can bring all the food and products you need with you. Declare it as “SHIP STORES”.
We stocked up on several major categories of things: canned food, paper products (especially paper towels and paper plates) and beer and wine. Example – a case of beer can cost up to $70, and a single can of soup – $6.
I am still not sure if we have enough beer and wine, so to save it, we bought some rum in Bimini – a liter of the local Ricardo rum is only $11. So bone up on your rum cocktails and take some ingredients from home! 😉
Needless to say, we made sure that we have plenty of gas, diesel and water. Our watermaker is not operational right now, so all we have is 50 gallons in the boat, 30 gallons on deck in big blue jerry cans and about 15 one-gallon jugs.
To conserve fresh water, I purchased a fabulous product – Sailor Soap. It is a shampoo, conditioner and body wash, all in one, that is made out of only natural ingredients (it smells heavenly!!!) and lathers in salt water. In other words, with this shampoo I should be able to wash my hair and body in the ocean and only do a quick rinse with fresh water afterwards! The value pack is the best choice for the money.
Gulf Stream Crossing
We were waiting for that weather window for a while, since December. There were a couple of them in the meantime, but we still had some last minute boat projects, so we had to pass. Finally, around mid-January we were ready. A lot of people cross straight from Marathon (where we lived for a while), or from Rodriguez Key near Key Largo. When we left Marathon, there was no window at all for at least a week or even two, so we decided to slowly make our way to No Name Harbor in Key Biscayne (Miami), another popular spot.
Besides us, there were about 15-20 boats waiting for the same thing. No Name Harbor is a perfect place to wait for the window – a beautiful park, quiet harbor, and plenty of things to do and see! Here are more details about Bill Baggs Park and No Name Harbor and why it is a perfect place to prepare for the Crossing.
The advantage of starting at No Name Harbor is the shortest possible distance to Bimini – only about 42 nautical miles. The disadvantage – you cannot utilize Gulfstream as you can from Marathon or Rodriguez Key. The solution in this case is to select your destination on the chart plotter about 20 miles south of your actual destination in hopes that the Stream washes you exactly where you need to end up.
In order to choose the window, everyone listens to Chris Parker and then discusses the opportunities. Finally, the window appeared to be great on Sunday, February 3.
The good thing about this window was no wind with North in it – you should never sail with any Northerly, because when wind blows against the Gulf Stream, you will get extremely high waves with short intervals – very dangerous conditions. These waves even earned the name “Elephants”! The bad thing – the predicted West wind was non-existent at all.
It was motoring all the way.
But we were happy to take this window, no matter what. We hear that
most of the people motor or motorsail anyway. You don’t have to feel bad about it. The goal is to cross, and then you can enjoy the sailing.
In average, it takes about 12 hours to cross from Miami to Bimini, but we were trying to go easy on our motor, so we left earlier than we initially wanted. We raised our anchor at 3:30 am Sunday morning.
Soon on our radar we saw a whole chain of boats, moving in front of and behind us. Boats everywhere!
I was standing on the bow with a spot light, pointing at crab traps. There are not as many of them as in the Keys, but if you catch one in the dark and lose your motor, especially when there’s no wind, the consequences can be disastrous.
By 4:30 we cleared the last marker and entered the open water. It was so cool to know you are in the ocean and still see countless lights around from all the other boats, including three cruise liners in the distance – we were definitely not alone!
The day was very quiet, as predicted, and the sea was calm. There was a long swell, which didn’t disturb the boat at all. Interesting that we saw the Miami skyline as far as 40 miles out!
By midday Michael noticed something weird about the compass – our bearing, according to the magnetic compass, was 20 degrees different from our bearing on the GPS. What in the world?..
“Hey, we are kind of in the Western corner of the Bermuda Triangle” I said, starting to freak out, “weird stuff starts happening!”
A bit later we finally figured it out. The magnetic compass showed the direction we were pointing at – South-East. GPS bearing is calculated electronically, so it doesn’t show the direction of the bow, but where the boat is actually moving to. And it was moving East-North-East!
Because of the Gulf Stream, we were moving sideways!
We have read about the effects of the Stream before but never actually experienced them on our own. No wonder, they call it “the river inside the ocean”. I don’t know for sure how fast the current was in the middle, but no matter how we tried to veer East or South-East, the boat was undoubtedly washing north. The more South we turned, the less our speed became, to the point it dropped below 2 knots. There was no way we could stay on our course. We had to find a compromise between keeping the course and maintaining a decent speed.
You can see on our In-Reach tracking that no matter what we did, we were still washed a bit too far North. When the GPS matched the compass once again, we realized we left the “hyperspace” and could come back. Because of this our actual distance from “door to door” became almost 60 miles.
About 7 miles before Bimini we saw land and at 5 pm sharp we entered the Bimini Sands Resort and Marina. Our Gulf Stream crossing was successful!
It took us 13,5 hours to cross the Gulf Stream from No Name Harbor in Key Biscayne to Bimini.
The approach to Bimini Sands is probably the easiest on the island – the best description about how to enter was given by Steve, the owner of a neighboring catamaran, in his YouTube Video.
The Marina had a special – only $100 for staying a week, and since we haven’t been on a dock for many months, we decided to take the deal and enjoy Bimini.
Arrival Procedures
When we arrived to Bimini Sands Resort and Marina, the office was still open. They explained that to clear the customs, one had to take a taxi to the airport, but the customs were already closed for the day – it was Sunday, too! So it looked like we and several other boats had to clear the next day.
“But can we leave the boat?” asked Michael. Normally you are not allowed off the boat until you check in, but it was Super Bowl Sunday and he really wanted to watch the game. Another factor was that it was our eleventh anniversary!
“Well… I can’t tell you that you may leave…” said one of the super friendly Bahamian marina managers, “but there is a bar down that road that shows the game”.
There could be no tastier food than the delicious local fried fish and two local Kalik beers! And to have a Super Bowl game on a large TV was perfect!
Only the captain has to go through the customs in Bahamas, so in the morning Michael and several others took a resort mini-bus to the airport. Although we asked for 180 days, we were given 90, which was ok. The procedure was very easy and straightforward.
When Michael came back, we proudly changed our yellow quarantine flag to the Bahamian courtesy flag.
Welcome to Bahamas!!!😍
