Leaving the Bahamas....Nice to be back in the US of A... May 1-10 2016

We had planned to leave for Green Turtle Cay on Monday May 2, but waited for DeVere (Job Site) to return to their boat as his flight from Ft Lauderdale was cancelled on Monday. We took care of some household chores (or would those be boat hold chores?) and had a nice relaxing day in general. As soon as he arrived on Tuesday we left Treasure Cay and travelled 17 miles to the Bluff House Marina at Green Turtle Cay.  To do this we had to go "outside" through an area known as the Whale.  It is only a few miles out of the Sea of Abaco and around Whale Cay (due to a sandbar in the Sea of Abaco) but it can be notoriously rough.  But not for us today....a nice ride to Bluff House for Sum Escape and Job Site.  It was actually rougher on the Sea of Abaco than the Atlantic! 
Smooth seas...

And what a nice spot to spend a few days.
Scott and Brigitte (Putz'n Around) were already there so we joined them along with DeVere and Carole at the pool and got re acquainted and learned about the area. 

We had a great dinner watching a thunderstorm pass just to our north that night.  The Ballyhoo Restaurant

We had fish visiting our vessel everyday.  We also had an occasional sting ray. No pictures of the sting rays unfortunately.

 

 Wed we had a little rain...yes it even rains in the Bahamas!

On Thursday, we walked to Green Turtle Cay Club, a nice hour round trip walk to the other marina on Black Sound.  I think I like the Bluff House better.  We walked across the bluff to the beach in the afternoon and spent a nice afternoon visiting and just enjoying the sights. In the evening, we went to pizza night at the Ballyhoo Restaurant on site.  It was really good!

 

On Friday we launched the dinghy to go to the New Plymouth settlement on White Sound. 

We attended the Green Turtle Cay Island Roots Heritage Festival. 

The local band...

 

So when was the last time you had lunch at the liquor store?  Well you can do that in New Plymouth.  What a cute little business.  And the burgers were good!

We toured the settlement and stopped for a goombay smash at the originator's bar, Miss Emily's Blue Bee Bar.  What a friendly place, and great goombays too! 

In the evening on Friday we dinghyed back to New Plymouth to get dinner at Pineapples.  The place was about to close due to lack of business and the eight of us changed the chef's mind!  He was the only one at the establishment and was previously the chef on lobster boats so whipping up 8 meals was no issue for him! The gentleman there cooked us great fish kabobs....there was only one other patron at the joint.  But it was well worth the rough dinghy ride. 

 

We also went to the locals watering hole.  The high tides due to the new moon had waves washing up between the deck boards at the bar!  And boy, was it a rough and wet dinghy ride back to the boat! 

But it was a fun evening for our last night in "civilization" in the Bahamas....until next year.
Saturday morning we cast off the lines bound 86 miles away for Mangrove Cay, an anchorage we could use on our trip back to the good ole US of A.  This worked out well for us given it was such settled weather.  This cay would not have offered much protection if there was much wind wave action. 

 Approaching Mangrove Cay, our anchorage for the evening.  Note the water color, we are so going to miss this......

Sunset

 

 

We pulled anchor at 5:30 AM for the last 114 miles of the trip across the Gulf Stream to the Fort Pierce inlet. 

Sunrise as we are leaving Mangrove Cay. Note how calm it was!

We travelled with DeVere and Carole and Scott and Brigitte angled off toward Stuart Florida. 

 

The Little Bahama Bank is like an aquarium!  Dead calm and we could see down 30 feet to the bottom!  Julie got a good video (for a phone video anyway) of some of the clarity of the water and some fish swimming by.  We were both a bit sad to be leaving such a paradise for boating.  But we will be back next year!

Once off the Little Bahama Bank it was still quite calm.  But as we got into the Gulf Stream, the waves really picked up and the 10MPH cruise speed was getting very uncomfortable.  So we exercised the diesels on Sum Escape and Job Site for about 2-1/2 hours and went about 18 MPH to "get on top" of the waves to smooth things out.  Burned up some of that expensive Bahamas diesel fuel.....

 

 Julie was lying down in the salon and did good with her new trick of shutting the curtains so she cannot see the waves.  But that is also why we have no crossing pictures of the rough seas...our photographer was out of commission for a couple hours.

 

As we got closer to the inlet for Fort Pierce the waves really settled down so the last 10 miles or so we slowed back down.  The extra speed definitely took some time off the trip and we were entering the inlet around 3 PM.  This was about an hour before low tide and the current coming out of the inlet was quite strong.  Our normal no wake idle speed is around 6.5 MPH....we were making 2 MPH over ground against the tide!  Job Site following us in along with a couple sport fishing boats.

And then getting into the marina was interesting as well.  The cross current had us "crabbing" down the narrow channel to the Ft Pierce City Marina.  After fueling, we took a dock next to Job Site and got the salt off the boat.  It was really thick as waves were hitting the top of the bimini on the fly bridge at times as we crossed.  It was a long Mother's Day for Julie but the calls from the children were so much appreciated!
We had dinner at the Original Tiki Bar on Tuesday night to celebrate Carey and Nancy's purchase of a new boat....more on that later.

We'll spend a few days here re provisioning, walking the city and checking on my Mom's house here.  Checking Mom's house

A cat in the local 1950's Rosslow's Dept. Store.  A "survivor" business Julie and Vicki enjoyed shopping at .

 The view of the city from our slip.



On Wed. we went over to Harbortown Marina and looked at Carey and Nancy's new boat!   Nice job you two....beautiful Nordic Tug 37!



Tom visited the Navy SEAL museum while Julie went grocery shopping.  The displays are really well done, sorry I didn't take better pictures.  These guys are amazing....we are all indebted to them for their unselfish service.  The museum is in Fort Pierce as the remote beaches here were used for training way back when the UDT program was started for WW2. 

  

We will cast off on Thursday with Tom and Vicki (who arrived early Monday morning from the Bahamas aboard Grand Baron) and Carey and Nancy on their new boat (Tug LeeLoo) which is about a mile north of us at another marina. It is great to catch up to our river system travelling buddy boats again!  That is one of the really cool things about this trip, one keeps running into folks one has not seen for quite some time.  It is really fun!