After spending more than a year in the Lesser Antilles, including an unprecedented lockdown for Covid-19 and the busiest hurricanes seasons on record, the Bahamas were a very pleasant discovery to us:
The Bahamas are made of 700+ islands and 2,000+ cays in about the same 400 nautical miles that separate Grenada from Barbuda in the Lesser Antilles. So much more to explore!
The wind in the Bahamas veers clockwise, so you have wind from every direction, a little bit like in the Med, and very unlike the Lesser Antilles, where the Trade Winds always blow from the east!
Sailing in the Bahamas is exhilarating, you can have super flat seas even in 20 knots of wind, and that makes Bahamas the only place in the world where sailing upwind is pleasant!
There are countless sand bars and cays that make the Bahamas a perfect place for kiteboarding: No matter where you drop the hook, you are always protected from the swell and exposed to the wind!
The water is so clear that snorkeling and diving it’s just amazing (once you get used to swim with sharks…)
The anchorages were all fantastic:
We had exhilarating day sails from one island or cay to the next one, using practically all possible sail plans, and sailing in all points of sail:
Close-hauled
Beam reach
Close reach
Broad reach
Running down wind
Here is a fantastic video of one of the many great sailing days (credit S/V Alissa):
We had a lot of fun trimming the sails to perfection with the help of our friends Joaquin and Monica:
And of course running downwind with our Parasailor:
We had a great time with our friends on Plan B, Alissa, and Valentine. Many sundowners, dinners and parties.
The places we anchored were spectacular:
At some point, we felt like being in Jurassic Park:
Diving in a real Blue Hole with our friends was fantastic. Dean’s Blue Hole is the world’s 2nd deepest with a depth of 202 meters and the site of the Vertical Blue freediving competition held annually.
And of course, kite boarding locations were among the best of our lives! In the Bahamas I learned how to do a jibe foiling into the turn without touching the water! I had tried many times in the past, but I was never able to complete the turn. Then one day, at my first try, it come out just like that. I was as happy as a little kid:
Our kites color combination matched perfectly with the colors of the sea:
And Yuka was a happy girl kite boarding!
We had such a great time in the Bahamas, and we’re really great to have chosen this destination to stage our second Atlantic crossing.
After having a great farewell dinner with Plan B, we were pleasantly entertained with fireworks. It was a heck of a farewell party!
And now, another ocean crossing!