In our case, over the 68 miles of Atlantic Ocean between Miami and Bimini. We finally made it out of Florida. Woo hoo! We were beginning to wonder if it was ever gonna happen.

We left at 4am on Tuesday morning. The winds were east-southeast, which is exactly what you want, but there was a bit of a thunderstorm when we were leaving which had some north winds and made our departure a little rough. Here I am with the most conservative captain in the world and it’s thundering and lightning outside and I asked him if we should still go and he said, “Well, if lightning’s going to hit us it could hit us here or out there.” Lawson was ready to go. We had done a trial run of where we enter the Atlantic a day or two before just to get our bearings. Basically, you go out by the lighthouse and there are several markers to follow until you are out into the deep blue. But to me, it seemed very scary. And very scary in the dark! But it helped that we had done our trial run. Made me feel a little better. We had anchored up out right by the departure point in Hurricane Hole the night before. It was the quietest anchorage we had enjoyed thus far and we all slept like babies. Away from the city madness and skyline, we got a clear view of a pink sunset and a pod of dolphins were swimming around our boat. It felt like a good sign.

But back to the crossing…so it’s thundering here and there and lightning, but we’re going for it. Lawson is decked out in his foul weather gear and we’re making our way out to the deep blue. It’s raining and I’m getting soaked. Tristan is still sleeping below. The great thing about the lightning is it’s lighting up the sky and giving us our bearings. After a while, I went below and Lawson stayed above the entire crossing. He said that the lightning continued to put on a good show throughout the night. Meanwhile, Tristan woke up and had some seasickness so I was on puke patrol. What this consisted of was letting him throw-up in a tupperware container, giving him water, wiping his face and letting him watch a gazillion episodes of Avatar on the computer. Thank God the waves calmed after the storm and the rest of the ride was basically like a lake, so his sickness didn’t last long.

At around 11am Lawson called from up on deck, “Land ho!” and lo and behold there was the island of Bimini in the distance. The first thing I noticed was the water no longer had the green color that Florida water has – it was all blue, through and through. And so clear. And beautiful. As we got closer, you could see right down to the bottom. It really felt like we were finally somewhere different. Everyone had warned Lawson to not arrive in Bimini at night because it’s hard to navigate your way in, but we didn’t have any problem. Maybe because it was daylight, but there were big green buoys guiding us in and the marina we are staying at, Browns, was right on the left. As we approached we could see both sides of the island – the right side has a big resort and the left side, where we are staying, is a little more working-class. We took a short walk over to the beach, which is beautiful, and the surrounding town, well, it’s a little rough around the edges. As we walked Tristan was whining, saying he thought The Bahamas was going to be like Hawaii, and he also said, “This place gives me the creeps!” Which I think is a little boy’s translation for a foreign place that is quite different than anything he’s ever seen before. However, I know he will enjoy the beach, which is absolutely beautiful no matter what side of the island you are on, or at a fancy resort or a beater marina.

We had dinner at the marina restaurant and without realizing it ordered a conch trifecta. I guess since we finally made it to The Bahamas, we were ready for this island specialty. Conch fritters, conch salad and cracked conch. It was all as good as we imagined it would be. We hit the hay early and all slept well. Today we are ready to explore. Since all the repairs are done now (knock on wood!) we can actually have some fun. Though there still are some chores…Lawson is currently doing some much needed rearranging of all our crap…finding new spaces to tuck stuff away. And now that we are here, it’s pretty evident that we won’t be needing any blankets or jackets any more! After Tristan does his schoolwork this morning we will definitely go to the beach. It’s fun just watching all the fish in the water around our boat. Since you can see right through the water it’s like a huge aquarium.

We plan to stay here one more night then make it to Nassau. April Mitchell, if you’re reading this, get your flight to Nassau! 🙂 Offer goes out to anyone who is crazy enough to join the shakedown cruise. Terri? Lisa? Anyone? Shoot me a text if you’re interested. Probably won’t be communicating quite as well from here on out as I won’t always have wifi, but I’ll be updating the blog regularly. Promise to post some pictures of Bimini soon, too.