April 1, 2009 - West End, Grand Bahama

No fooling, we are off on April 1 for West End. The transit of the Little Bahama Bank was pleasant, with just a slight chop of 2 – 3 feet to create a salt crust on Monarch, for the first 5 hours of our trip.



Those of you who know tropical waters are aware that lighter colors indicate shallower areas, and yellow especially shallow. Except, we have learned, if there are Fish Muds, as pictured here. These are areas of normal surrounding depths – about 11 feet of water here, but light colored from the silt and sand that a large school of fish churns up. We don’t know what the fish are doing, though!


At the very end, we needed to jump out into the Atlantic, and were surprised to see 6-foot steep waves greeting us. Fortunately, we only had about 45 minutes of rough water, until the entrance to West End, and Captain Jerry handled the conditions admirably.

We scooted into the narrow entrance to the harbor, and made fast to our appointed berth.

The harbor is very nice, with three restaurants, a workout facility, large pool, ocean side beach and all the trimmings. This is all lost on us, as we plan to depart at 4:00 a.m. to make the trip in the calmest part of the day, back to Florida.