Last season we left from Florida to head to The Bahamas. This season we are heading to The Bahamas from Charleston, South Carolina. We’ve been in Charleston for a few weeks now, and have had the opportunity to visit friends, go to our storage facility, clean the boat, get gelcoat repair work done, do regular maintenance on the boat, and provision for the upcoming year! It’s been a lot of work and has required a lot of planning, but we’re ready for the next part of our journey.
This time, instead of going to The Bahamas and then coming back to the United States for hurricane season, we are heading to the Eastern Caribbean directly from The Bahamas. Our plan is to be in Grenada before July 2024 and stay there through the next hurricane season. In essence, we’ll be gone from the States for at least 14 months. This will be the longest we’ve ever been gone from family and friends. Our hope is that many will visit us along the way and experience a respite in another part of God’s great earth!
Our good friends, Rick and Maryalice, have their boat on the hard at Bradford Marine in Port Lucaya, Grand Bahamas. They drove from Idaho to meet us in Charleston, and just arrived today! They will join us on our boat for the passage to The Bahamas once we find the right weather-window, which looks to be in a couple of days. It will be nice to have them on the Passage, as they are a joy to be around. It will be such a blessing to have them help with night watches on our passage as well. We’ve decided to do three-hour shifts (Maryalice from 8pm-11pm, Kory from 11pm-2am, me from 2am-5am, and Rick from 5am-8am). That will allow us all to get plenty of sleep, so long as the seas remain calm.
Rick and Maryalice also brought their new dog, Harley, to join us on the trip. Gracie has to learn share her space for about a week, but the pups seem to be getting along pretty well. Harley will be a great boat dog, and I’m sure the two of them will become good friends in no time!
To prepare for our entry into The Bahamas, Gracie had to be seen by a veterinarian. The Bahamas not only requires a Pet Permit to be granted by the Bahamian Department of Agriculture, but they also require pets to be examined by a veterinarian prior to entering the country, and for the vet to sign an import permit form stating that the animal is free of clinical diseases and complies with the required tests and vaccinations. Wellington from BahamasPetPermit.com helped us get the Pet Permit in only a week, and Gracie’s final exam at the vet went well this week. We got all of the paperwork required for customs to allow Gracie into the country. And to top all of that, Gracie got a good grooming, professionally this time, instead of my hack job! That was a treat for both of us!
The rest of our preparations now include:
- filling our tanks with fuel and water,
- preparing meals for the passage,
- getting out safety gear (PFD’s, lifelines, etc.),
- route planning (and reroute options),
- cleaning sea strainers and last minute oil checks,
- securing the dinghy and other items on the boat, and then…
- starting the passage, Monday, November 6th!
There is an old sailor’s blessing that one of our neighbor’s spoke over us when we set off on our sailing adventures, “May you have fair winds and following seas!” We receive this blessing and will always remember Randall and his kindness. And now, we pray as the Breton fisherman prayed, “Dear God have mercy on us and be good to us; the sea is so wide, and our boat is so small.”