Bimini to Berry’s!

An overnight sail from Bimini to the Berry Islands found us face to face with the best fishing to date yet the worst anchorage (possibly of all time).

Yep, our two-day sail from Bimini to Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands was a mixed bag!

Mostly “high’s” as our sail was downright FABULOUS on day 2 — we didn’t have to motor at all and cruised at 5.5 knots the entire time. We literally only turned on our engine as we were pulling in to anchor here in Great Harbour Cay (outside of Bullock’s Harbor).

Plus, you couldn’t really ask for much clearer or more beautiful water as we sailed our way over to the Berry’s. I mean really, how gorgeous is this?!

We also caught 3 pretty hefty Mutton Snapper along the way. Our best catch yet!

After catching a ^^barracuda^^ first on Day 1, we were definitely thrilled to pull in a snapper!

And then another.

And then another. You get the picture. ;))

And they are super delicious I might add!!!

Jereme did an awesome job filleting our catch of they day. (In case you are wondering, we bust out a regular old cutting board and fillet up our catches right on deck — it’s the best spot we have for the job and can easily been cleaned up with a bucket of salt water.) And after two awesome snapper dinners, we still have tons of frozen fish just waiting to be eaten.

The real “low point” of the trip was anchoring (or really “the anchorage” and not the actual act of anchoring) on night 1.

After beating into the wind and motor-sailing the entire first day with our friends Matt and Jessica from MJ Sailing, we then dropped anchor in the middle of the Great Bahama Banks around 7pm in about 20-25 feet of water. Although it’s only 20 or so feet of water, you still feel like you are in the middle of the ocean, which is all kinds of crazy in my opinion. We anchored our two boats close together and turned on a bunch of lights so we would be visible to any passing boats.

The weather conditions where we dropped anchor turned out to be (and what I hope will remain) the worst and rolly-est (is that a word?) anchorage ever! Pretty decent sized waves and strong winds. At the time, I wasn’t sure if this was “typical” anchoring or not, so both Jer and I went with it. Hello, I even managed to cook up fish tacos and yellow rice that night trying to make the best of the situation! Not really sure how, but I did. The so-called anchorage basically felt like a non-stop roller coaster ride the entire night. Thank god we have a boat with heavy displacement (20,000 lbs.). I can’t imagine if our boat was any lighter, we would have been flying through the air that night.

Jer and I both made it through the night by sleeping (and yes, we actually managed to sleep somehow) on the settees in our main cabin (knowing that the v-berth/bed would have been even worse to try and sleep in). At one point, I even moved a pile of blankets and pillows to the floor in the main cabin and slept next to Oliver in his dog bed. The lower to the floor the better, apparently. Oliver didn’t really care for the spot we picked to anchor and got sick in his dog bed once during the night and proceeded to cozy up next to me on the floor.  He even managed to boot me from my makeshift floor bed, lol. I was happy that he at least he found a cozy spot to sleep and let him have my bed.

Speaking of Oliver, he beat his personal potty-holding record on this trip, and held it for 33 hours (previous was 25-hours)! :(((( We tried and tried and tried to get him to go on the boat during the trip, but he refused. By the time we got to the Berry’s, he practially swam to shore he was so excited.

When we sailed into Great Harbour Cay, we dropped anchor just outside of Bullock’s Harbour…a tiny community with a small school, two small grocery type stores, and about 2 restaurants. You can land your dinghy at the concrete docks right by the church (visible from the anchorage).

We’ve spent the past week catching up on regular, every day tasks, like our gigantic bag of dirty laundry that desperately needed washing.

Oh, and investigating a slight overheating issue with the engine.  We’re still trying to get to the bottom of that one after taking apart, checking, and putting back together the entire cooling system (which btw looks great so it must be something else).

…More on our time here in Great Harbour Cay, coming soon!

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