The wind finally died down enough that it was time to head to our next stop in the Berry Islands! It’s almost a hundred-mile sail, so we needed an early start. We got up before dawn and set out as soon as we had enough light to go. We thought we’d be sneaking out, but one of our neighbors was nice enough to come over and throw off our bow lines.

We went out the channel and around to the north. A cruise ship was on its way in and we saw the pilot get dropped off. We needed to push up the throttles just a little to get past it as we were between the ship and its dock.

There was an interesting radio exchange as we were leaving. We heard a captain ask if anyone was around the channel. Eventually, a commercial trawler at anchor answered and the first captain said he had run aground. He needed someone to help pull him off the bank. We saw the trawler send a small boat to the channel, but there wasn’t a boat in the channel. After a bit of back and forth, the first captain said that he was waaaaay back on the north side of the inner bay by the Hilton.

Thus ensued a conversation with Wendy and me about the definition of a “channel.” We decided that a channel is a path between two larger bodies of water. In this case, the channel was between the ocean and the inner bay and the captain was cavalier with his use of the word “channel.”

The exchange went on for a while and the first captain started to get a bit pushy with the trawler captain. Given that the first captain was sitting on the bottom and the trawler captain was helping, it seemed out of line. I admired the patience and helpfulness of the trawler captain.

We rounded the north side of Bimini and pointed ourselves almost due east toward Great Harbour Cay. The trip was fairly uneventful. We had bow waves. For the most part, they were 1 or 2 feet, but we had a few hours where they were a bit more spritely. We would occasionally see another boat and a couple of mega-yachts yeeted (see Wendy’s earlier post about yeeting) past us on the way to Nassau.

The most interesting part of this transit was we used our pump out for the first time! Since our boat was a Great Lakes boat for 30 years, it does not have a macerator to automatically pump out overboard. You just don’t do that in the Great Lakes. There is a seacock for one, but it isn’t even hooked up. We thought about installing one, but this part of the loop is really the only time that regular pump outs wouldn’t be available. It didn’t seem work the time and expense.

I bought a manual pump on Amazon, attached it to a 30 inch 2×10, clamped on a couple of hoses, and viola! Manual pump out. As we were traversing the beautiful turquoise waters of the Great Bahama Bank, I hooked the whole thing up to our waste tank and pumped that crap overboard. It worked like a charm. After flushing it, I stowed it away for the next time.

As we approached Great Harbour Cay, we could see two Royal Caribbean ships at their private island of Little Stirrup Cay (Coco Cay). Great Stirrup Cay is right next door and is the private island for Norwegian Cruise Lines, but nobody was there. Coco Cay looks like an amusement park with rides and fun stuff all around. During our time at Great Harbour, we often saw two RC ships in port at the same time. The single cell tower’s data throughput seemed to drop significantly when several thousand cruisers were hitting it at the same time.

Coming into Great Harbour Cay, you can’t see the little cut through until you are almost on top of it, but it’s there! We waved at a couple of fishermen on the side as we idled through the cut. Right after the cut is the fuel dock on the starboard side. We couldn’t see anyone, so we just sidled up to the dock and tied up. I went and knocked on the door of the fuel house… empty.

Frustrated, I called the marina to go ahead and get our slip information before leaving the dock. We also learned that the fuel dock is only open until noon on Sundays. It’s on their website. Oops.

We pulled back and went the half mile more to the marina. They were burning the dump, we learned later, which explains the pillar of smoke that greeted us. A nice staff lady met us at the dock, but it was blocked by a dinghy. We opted for an open slip a few doors down.

We were greeted by a couple of sharks swimming around our boat. We checked in and settled in after a long day of cruising.