For the fourth or fifth time I find myself telling Nicole, there is no ICW to the Bahamas, honey. We have made it to Vero Beach and the next real stop is Lake Worth where we plan to jump across to The Bahamas. Nicole is beginning to express regular concern about “going outside” as anything off the coast is called. You can’t blame her; we have had some snotty weather in the past 1700 miles and she (like her mother, does get sea sick). Boyd seems completely immune to bad weather and Paul has seemed to “get over it” and have fewer issues with the roughness so it’s mostly just Nicole and I that “toss the cookies”.
As we have continued down the ICW on our way to Florida Nicole has said the words the rest of us are just thinking, what about “the crossing”. I’m pretty sure everyone is at least a little nervous about it, we sometimes mention “the crossing” but not that we are nervous about it. The Gulf Stream is notoriously rough and is prone to big, angry type waves. None of us, not even Boyd are looking forward to that, but no one else says it.
We do know that if the winds are from the North the waves are worse so we plan to avoid leaving with North winds if at all possible. We do know that the further South we go the more likely we are to be able to use the current rather than fight it. Sometimes the Gulf Stream current is as much as 4-5 knots and when the boat you are in does 6-7 knots it’s a bad idea to try to fight that much current.
Many cruisers go as far a Miami attempting to ride the current over to the Bahamas rather than cross it at a perpendicular angle. At the moment our plan is to go as far south as Lake Worth and angle across coming in around West End. We need to clear in through customs and West End would work as a spot to come into and also as a spot to clear in through as well. It is rather pricy to stay there and I have heard that if the weather is bad there isn’t much protection; I guess we’ll see. Until we do the rest of will have to just think about it while Nicole is the only one saying it out loud.