Tripppin In The Bahamas – Hello Abaco

A continuation from my earlier post, http://wp.me/pKtoE-b6.

The view from our back deck, taken as soon as we stepped foot on Bahamian soil.

After 7 hours on the boat, 280 gallons of fuel, 4 iPod playlists and some serious victory dances we finally made it to Marsh Harbor. The beginning of the trip proved to be a challenge, but we’d managed to make it to our destination in just enough time to try to figure out where our house was. Oh yeah, you thought we actually knew where we were staying? Ha. That would require too much planning, and if you haven’t figured out by now the house was the least of our worries.

We’d rented the place off of VRBO or some similar site, and the couple that owned the home neglected to give us actual GPS coordinates, thus rendering the “It’s on Eastern Shores” directions worthless. We knew we were in the right area, but the houses were all fairly similar looking in nature. Our saving grace was the unique dock our home had, and I’d managed to remember that it made a T-shape when I looked at it from Google Earth. Thanks for that Google. We were able to pick the house out fairly easily and we threw dock lines just as the sun was setting. Not half bad for some rookies from the states.

We’d made it, the house was amazing, the boat had performed beyond anything I could have asked, and the sweet taste of victory was something we’d all tasted that first morning. Unfortunately victory was all we tasted, because we had no real food. Everyone got up, threw on some clothes and we loaded the boat to head into Marsh Harbor. We needed to get fuel (if they had any), clear customs, check in with the Harbormaster, and get some local island breakfast.

Pulling into Marsh was something I wish I could describe in this blog, but it’s simply not possible. The harbor reminded me of all those wonderful places in the Saints I’d visited years prior. You had a slew of sailboats, trawlers, skiffs and local fishing boats all moored up in no particular order. Locals and passersby were eating toast and drinking coffee on their decks, happy to throw you the casual wave as we scooted by. It took us a minute to find the fuel docks we were looking for, but a nice guy named Andy was happy to greet us and give us help with the customs and immigration folks. We actually weren’t able to get fuel for the boat until we cleared customs, and I wasn’t going to try any sneaky business with the Bahamian officials. We had our super fashionable bright yellow “Quarantine” flag flying, as soon as we hit Bahamian waters, so Andy knew were fresh off the Florida Coast. We called the Harbormaster and added ourselves to the list of folks who needed to be cleared that morning. A few hours later, $1600 in fuel, a lot of paper work and some nice locals added up to us being cleared for the trip. For those of you wondering what you can/can’t bring, and how to declare it I’m happy to chat offline. We did take a fair amount of munitions with us, and a great deal of cash. None of which was an issue, and we did it all by the book.

The view from the front of the house

You can read the rest of the journey here, http://wp.me/pKtoE-bF.