March 24 – April 19, 2024; 13703 nm and 1856 days after departure from La Rochelle

I know, it’s been a loong time. But hey we moved a lot, enjoyed having Jana and Benoit aboard and even made 900 nm up north since George Town. Not that much time to sit down and write. Oh, and on top of all that, I needed to be in the mood to write😉.
Again, as anyone can probably imagine the two weeks with the kids went by much toooo fast. Apart from just being excited having the kids around us, we also enjoyed doing fun stuff together. Whether it was sailing, snorkelling, visiting sights, strolling ashore, bbq-ing or just trying to fish, everything was just more fun with the kids. As the kids had to fly out of Nassau, which was 130 nm up north, we had to keep going about every other day to have comfortable and not too long trips. Like that we could stop at famous anchorages like the James Bond Thunderbolt grotto to snorkel with many other fish (and tourists) or watch the Bohemian swimming pigs. The Exuma Islands were so different to the remoter island chains like the Ragged. Boy it was crowded! Everywhere many, many boats. The – for us craziest part was – that there were so many motor yachts. And I’m not talking about the normal sized sport fishing boats- noooo. Huge mega yachts with all the fun equipment one can think of and tenders so big that Altimate looked like a toy. Well it seemed the Exumas were the playground for the rich and beautiful people in the Bahamas. And we right between them – fortunately we were at least beautiful😁. At Iguana island we visited the many piggishly iguanas. They were so used to tourists bringing food that they immediately run towards us as soon as we touched ground. So strange as they normally run away and hide somewhere safe. Anyway after watching the iguanas for a while (actually it felt more like they were watching us hoping for more food I guess) we preferred collecting some drift wood to prepare a nice bonfire at the beach. As Benoit’s fishing (he was in charge 😉) was not yet successful we had to fall back on some sausages we had bought back in the Dominican Republic. Not the best ones but spiced up with some sauce and a nice pasta salad we had a fun dinner at the beach with the iguanas still watching us.

At the end of the two weeks it was Janas birthday and we thought it would be nice to have her special day not needing to move. The last leg to Nassau was a pretty long ride from about 7 hours over the shallow Nassau bank. For that leg we definitely wanted to have wind so that we could sail nicely the 35 nm. The day before Jana’s birthday was a great sailing day which we therefore used to head to Nassau. Also making sure we would have a nice “stay-put” day to do what ever we felt like doing.
Somehow I thought Nassau would be a cool and fun town with a very Caribbean vibe. Good looking and carelessly dressed locals smoking cigars while listening to relaxing Caribbean music and watching hot chicks dancing with their lovers. Well or something like that… I don’t know. In my mind I was thinking of old James Bond movies. Nassau should have been cool!!! Damn! Unfortunately especially me, I was very disappointed. No wonder with my dreamlike false expectations🙈. Nassau was a small town pimped up for cruise ship tourists at the cruise ship dock area. Bars, restaurants, tourist shops with lots of useless gadgets like at every cruise ship terminal – only here it was extraordinary expensive. Apart from that there was nothing to do or see. And the anchorages couldn’t be described as pretty either. Sorry I forgot, of course there was “Atlantis” at Paradise Island, an exclusive high end resort with all manmade fun you could think of and probably even more. Just nothing we were interested in.

Still we tried to have a nice birthday. Thanks to our friends which had been here for some time we moved to a little nicer anchorage after having bought some groceries. The next morning, I was in the middle of preparing a nice birthday breakfast and baking a cake when the coastguard passed by to tell us we had to leave the anchorage. We had no clue why (and still don’t know) but they were clear that we had to move immediately. We were not amused and in fact I was furious. Mom wanted a perfect birthday for Jana especially because it was years ago when we had celebrated together. I was very, very annoyed! Well hell – we couldn’t do anything about it. I had to calm down and we had to go all the way back to where we left the afternoon before. Our breakfast was postponed to a couple of hours later and Jana had to look after her cake herself. In the end all was good we had a nice breakfast or better brunch and decided to give the town another chance. We had a drink at the docks and later a beer at the only beach bar we had found close to where we were anchored. It was ok we had a fairly nice day but all in all we agreed Nassau was not really worth visiting in our opinion.
We still had 1,5 days together and Janas wish was spending a last day at the beach. Fortunately we found Rose island, which provided a good anchorage, a nice beach, a good snorkelling spot and was in easy reach only 5nm away. A last snorkel, a last stroll at the beach, a last dinner, an almost last game of rumikub, a last sail back in the morning to Nassau. And then it was already time to say goodbye. I hate this part! As happy as I was waiting for them to come as sad it always feels when they have to leave. That is definitely the hardest part of our life style! The good part is I can already look forward to having Luis aboard!!!

Tidying up the boat got us distracted from being sad in the afternoon. Having my birthday buddy Dogan his wife Ilka and some of his friends aboard Altimate got us distracted in the evening. Last year I celebrated my birthday together with Dogan and Debbie in the San Blas. So, as Dogan and Ilka happened to be in Nassau at the same time like us we decided the two birthday buddies needed a belated birthday party. We had a fun evening with lots of laughs and many drinks.

However a next appointment was coming up soon. We planned to catch up with one of our former exchange students, Jhonny. A sweet young lady from the DR who used to live with us for almost a year about 15 years ago. She was now living with her family in Fort Lauderdale. A good reason to have a stop in Florida to catch up with her and to get to know her family. Although we were a bit tired from the birthday evening we still managed to get Altimate and us ready for an early start on Saturday the 13th of April to head to Florida. All in all a trip from about 170 nm. We calculated to reach Florida depending on the wind either Monday or Tuesday with at least one stop at Bimini to check out. A small island north west of Nassau only 50 nm south east of Fort Lauderdale. But before we even reached Bimini Jhonny had unfortunately to cancel on us. As we only wanted to go there to see Jhonny we didn’t really know what to do. Our next planned destination was Beaufort in North Carolina but that was a trip of 600nm. Well as sailing is mostly slow speed travelling we had plenty of time to think about it. After discussing different options and checking the weather we decided to head directly to Beaufort. And as well we figured we could see Jhonny on our way back down the east coast.

The cool part was that the wind was just perfect to go up north. It can be a tricky route as there is the famous golf stream going up the east coast with up to 3,8 knots. It is more than splashy when the wind is southerly. Then you can smoothly join the golf stream and use the magic floating carpet to fly up north. But when there is a tiny northerly component you better get going and leave the stream. Wind against current can provide nasty wind waves which are very important to avoid!
But we were lucky! The wind was southerly, not too strong and was supposed to keep the next coming days, just perfect. What a random great timing! We were flying! And I mean flying with a jet not a glider!!! It was so much fun!! Even when the wind was almost dead on our last day we still made almost 5knots. so crazy!!! In the morning of 15th of April we left Bimini and a few nm later we got on the stream and smoothly lifted onto the magic carpet. Only 3,5 days later we arrive at 1am on the 19th of April at Beaufort. 600nm with an average speed of 6,7 knots💪. Usually we are happy when we have an average speed of 5,0 knots. Oh and we made it to the USA!