Once Lisa and John left, we had to address an overheating engine. After much diagnosis, it was determined that the heat exchanger needed to be cleaned. We returned back to Boat Harbour, where John spent a day taking the exchanger out and then brought it to Marsh Harbour Boat Yard for cleaning. It solved our overheating problem on that engine, therefore, he decided to have the other one cleaned as well. We stayed in BH for a week preparing for the trip to the Northern Abacos in preparation for crossing back to the US.
Diane continued practicing here basket weaving as well.
Once we left BH, we had to wait a few days for seas to calm down to get around Whale Cay, so we visited Hope Town, which is one of our favorite harbors.
From Hope Town, we traveled to Great Guana Cay to have dinner with Nick and Sharon on TOI BOAT. The next morning we were able to get around the Whale. We stayed at Bluff House Marina on Green Turtle Cay until a weather-window was predicted for crossing the Gulf Stream. We were keeping in touch with three other RMHYC cruisers who were planning to cross as well. It was nice having "buddy" boats.
When we left GTC, the plan was to stop at Allans-Pennsacola the first night, which all of us did.
The next day, we were all planning to anchor behind Mangrove Cay, but the other boats decided to press on and get closer to the Gulf Stream. They were going to anchor someplace on the Bahama Bank where there would be no protection if the seas got rough. We decided that we didn't want to take the chance of having a rough night, so we traveled to Old Bahama Bay Marina on Grand Bahama Island.
On Friday, April 23, we were up at 5 a.m. to make our crossing. Seas were predicted to be 2 feet or less with sunny skies. We left before sunrise, heading for St. Lucie Inlet in Stuart, FL.
Once underway, we were in radio contact with the three other RMHYC cruising boats. They did end up with a rough night, so it was good to know we made a good, although much more expensive, decision. We stayed in touch with them during the crossing. The sea conditions stayed as predicted, resulting in one of our smoothest crossing. About half way across, we were boarded by the US Coast Guard for a safety check, which only took about 15 minutes.
We saw a basking shark swim right next to the boat, which was about 20 feet long. It was amazing to see! Other than the coast guard and shark, the trip was uneventful and we were in Stuart within six hours. It was great to be back in the USA!
