Category Archives: Caribbean

Recovering from the Passage in Marsh Harbour, Abacos, Bahamas

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Wednesday, November 19, 2025 — It usually takes us a few days to recover from the disrupted sleep cycles during passages. This morning, we woke up feeling like our body clocks were back to normal. While Eric was still in pain, his back did feel a little better. Knowing he was on the mend made him optimistic that he’d fully recover relatively soon. Sunrise.

In the morning, we did school and chores. In the afternoon, we went back to Snappas for lunch. Snappas also had beautiful views. The menu had a page explaining its history. It had opened in 2002, and was destroyed by a hurricane in 2004. In 2005, it reopened and was destroyed by Hurricane Dorian in 2019. It reopened again in 2023. The food was good, but we thought that Colors had better food, more food choices, and was better value for money. 

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Exploring Marsh Harbor, Abacos Islands, The Bahamas

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Tuesday, November 18, 2025 — Christi and Keith both woke up late, still feeling zombie-esque. In the morning, Christi did school with Keith, cleaned and did laundry. Eric was still in a lot of pain this morning. Despite the pain, he managed to rinse and wipe down some of the starboard side of the boat. Eric and Keith worked on organizing stuff to move from marina mode to anchorage mode. For us, recovering from a passage is a 1:1 ratio — for every day at sea, it takes a day of extra rest, extra cleaning, extra organizing, etc, to get back on track for our normal routine.

We went to shore for a late lunch/early dinner, mostly because we wanted to enjoy time on land. The first restaurant we went to was called Snappas, which was a little bit west of the public dock that we went to yesterday. We picked it in part because the reviews said it had its own dock. The restaurant and its sea wall, not dock, looked new and there was a small marina there.

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Welcome to Marsh Harbour, Abacos Islands, Bahamas

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Monday, November 17 continued… once we’d anchored, we breathed a huge sigh of relief. We made it! Woo hoo! We watched the sunrise.

We noticed that, unlike most of the other places we’d visited in The Bahamas, the water had a green hue to it instead of the typical stunning azure blue. The water in and of itself was clear, but there was algae on the sand, giving the water the green tint. 

After the sunrise, we got to work. Keith did a light rinse down to get the worst of the salt off. Now that we were back to making all of our own water, we were concerned about water usage, so he was careful to not use more than was absolutely necessary. Christi wiped down the windows with wet, lightly soaped rags.

Eric went out to the back deck and configured the boom from paravane mode to dinghy mode. He had to twist a little awkwardly to undo the shackles and reattach them differently, which involved bending and twisting at awkward angles. At one point, he felt something was wrong, and realized that he’d hurt his back. 

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Days 5 of Our Passage from Norfolk to Marsh Harbor, Abacos, Bahamas

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Sunday, November 16 – By midnight, the seas had begun to deteriorate. It was still a nice ride, but the storm up north was affecting sea conditions down here. If all went according to plan, we’d be arriving to Abacos before the seas got bad. Since the wind direction had changed a little bit, Eric change our course a little bit for a smoother ride.

As the day went on, the conditions continued to worsen, which surprised us. When Eric checked the weather, he saw we were in the convergence zone of three weather systems, making the seas seriously confused. Swells were 3 – 4 feet at rapid intervals coming from three different directions, and once in a while we’d get a 5- 6 footer that would slam into us hard. There was 2 – 3 feet of wind chop, too.

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Days 3 – 4 of Passage from Norfolk to Marsh Harbor, Abacos, Bahamas

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Friday November 14 — By midnight, we were nearly across the Gulf Stream. Eric was able to put the autopilot back onto auto navigation mode. Our speeds improved, and Eric moved the RPM down to 1600, where we were averaging about 6-knots. The winds had calmed down and were now coming from the aft, so the ride improved. Keith’s seasickness subsided, and he didn’t seem to be catching Christi’s cold. Eric was still fighting the cold. Christi’s cold had turned into a sinus infection. It was a dark night. The moon didn’t rise until 0200, and when it did, it was only a crescent, so it only helped a little with illumination. Here was dawn:

Friday was a much better day at sea than Wednesday and Thursday had been. The seas were calmer — 3 – 4 feet at 5 – 6 seconds with wind chop waves of about 1-foot, all coming from the starboard beam. It was significantly warmer than the Chesapeake had been, and the temperatures were pleasant at 75-degrees. We were averaging high 5s/low 6s at 1600 RPM all day, although at one point, when the current was with us, we sped all the way up to 7-knots for a short while and at another point, when the current was against us, we slowed down to the low 5s for a short time.

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