June 12-13, 2022 Crossing from the Berrys Bahamas to Ft Pierce, USA

 6-12 Sunday. It has been great sleeping in air conditioning.  I baked the egg bake this morning after letting it sit overnight.  Of course, it was amazing.  
After breakfast, we turned off the power and AC, unplugged the power cords and brought them back to the cockpit.  We took a photo of the the meter reading and went to the office to pay for 2 nights and the power we used.  We were off the dock by 11:20am.  Dave brought the lines and fenders back to the cockpit to store once we were underway. 

 

leaving Great Harbour

power cords used to connect the boat to shore power (which we pay for)

the power cords will be would and stored in these containers

storing fenders on the davits while under weigh

It was 400 nautical miles to Brunswick Landing Marin, which will take 3 days or less.  Light wind today, so motored most of the day. 

  And we were still taking on water under the engine.  By evening, we were considering gong straight across to Ft Pierce. They have an easy inlet to navigate and we can refuel.  We’ll see how the night goes.  I napped after dinner and Dave took the helm.
6-13 Monday Right after midnight, I took one the helm after Dave briefed me on what ships to watch.  Still light winds and motoring with a beautiful full moon.


 

Between 12:30 and 1:00am I had to slow down and change course for 2 different ships to pass in front of us.  At 2:30 am, we reached a waypoint that we had set to turn north.  We were in the Gulf Stream and picked up a couple knots in speed.  At 5:30am, Dave took over watch and I went to sleep.  I was up again at 8:30 to have breakfast with Dave, the lovely egg bake.  Somewhere along the way, we had made up our minds to to go Ft Pierce.  We had heard horror stories about returning to the US with food onboard.  We thought we had 3 days to eat this food.  We checked in with Customs online using the Roam app as we were entering the inlet.  No problem, cleared online.  If we had to have someone board our boat, we were going back out to sea.  Later we found out that if the food had been cooked, it would be ok.  We were anchored by 10:30am, almost 24 hours from the time we left the Berrys in the Bahamas.  

Dave emptied 4 fuel cans into the fuel tank.  We took them to a marina by dinghy to fill and had lunch there.   Back at the boat, I slept all day.  I started having a scratchy throat last night.  Today I was achy and had a headache and a temperature.  I used a COVID test and it was positive!  Good thing we stopped in Ft Pierce because I wouldn’t have been able to help at the helm overnight again.  I was feeling guilty about going to shore and having lunch at a restaurant.  I still thought it was a sore throat at the time.  
We were mostly by ourselves for the last 3 months.  So we figure I picked up covid from the customs agent who had just been on a cruise ship seeing people from all over.  We met with him in the small marina office with air conditioning and about 6 people crowded into the small space.  I didn’t even think about wearing a mask, and no one else was.