By Rich

We’ve just wrapped up an awesome cruise of the Bahamas! We’ve been living aboard since late December with very limited bandwidth, so we haven’t had a chance to keep the blog up to date but we wanted to drop in a quick out-of-sequence post to celebrate a very successful cruise. Here were the superlatives for the trip:

Cruise Calendar Period: December 22, 2016 to January 31, 2017

Cruise Duration: 41 days

Passage Days: 22

Days in Port / At Anchor: 19

Miles Covered: 634

Furthest Point South Reached: Georgetown, Great Exuma Island

Sailing Milestones Achieved for Rich: First single-handed overnight passage (Fort Lauderdale to Bimini); exceeded 1,000 miles in total single handed experience (1,122)

Breakdowns / Carnage / Drama: One sail comprehensively exploded by a squall while sailing to Big Major; otherwise none

Key Take-Aways About Bahamas Cruising: Locals tell us that the weather during our trip was very unusual, but we experienced either (i) long periods of strong winds that trapped us in port for many days in a row or (ii) flat calms. Very few days fell in between these two wind extremes. Those cruising to the Bahamas may want to plan for delays in their cruise plan as a result. Also, marine services in the Bahamas are quite limited (apart from Nassau). As such, cruisers should plan to be very self sufficient from a maintenance and repair standpoint.

Editor’s Note:  In general we try to keep this blog’s posts in narrative sequence. We will therefore complete our Drivin’ South post series for those who are interested in learning about travel down the Intracoastal Waterway before we begin posts highlighting our visit to the Bahamas. We try to limit interruptions to the narrative sequence to posts like this one, which we make when we’ve fallen significantly behind due to extended cruises.