Bahamas: Expectations vs. Reality

The Bahamas has been everything we hoped for and more. It’s such a different cruising experience here than in the states. The locals actually want cruisers to come to shore and visit their islands. It’s been so welcoming.

We’ve received some questions about if it’s the same as we expected or if we’ve been surprised by anything. The answer is yes and no. Here’s the breakdown of what we’ve learned in our first month here…

• Checking in: We were all worked up about having all the right paperwork for customs and immigration. The dog visas are a whole other layer we had never dealt with before and we had to register to fly the drone. We completed the Click2Clear application, printed out all of our documentation and checked into West End. The process took less than five minutes and they essentially didn’t look at any of our printed paperwork. They just stamped our passports and issued us a three-month cruising permit. It was a lot of stress and anticipation for no reason.
• Food: We knew it’d be expensive here and fresh things would be hard to come by. We stocked up the boat before coming over, knowing we may only have access to what we bring. The meat sold in the stores here leaves a lot to be desired. Figuring it’s easier to ship packaged items to the islands, we focused on provisioning meats, veggies, rice/pasta and beans but didn’t stock up on enough snacks. A bag of Tostitos is about $10 here. I even saw a bag of Chex Mix for $16. If you know or live with someone like Tom (who can down half a bag of chips in a sitting), this is a problem. However, if you time your shopping trips right after the delivery boat makes a stop, you have pretty good chances of finding fresh veggies. And, the veggies haven’t been as expensive as I anticipated. Overall, I’d give our provisioning job a solid B+.
• Off-grid living: As expected, our favorite part about this trip has been being completely alone, anchored near a remote, uninhabited island. It would be hard to do this for long periods of time without wind/solar power generation, battery storage and our reverse osmosis water maker. We knew we liked these features but now we love them, and have so much more appreciation for the freedom they allow.
• Area: This may seem obvious, but the Bahamas feels enormous. The islands are spread across 100,000-square nautical miles, which is roughly the size of California. In our minds, it felt like once we made the crossing from Florida everything would be a short hop away. In some cases that’s true but most of the time the destinations are quite spread out. It’d be no big deal if we could move whenever the weather was right but balancing the time in front of the computer and weather has been frustrating at times. Which brings us to our final topic...
• Balance: Between work and waiting on weather windows, we’ve been forced us to spend more time in certain places than we otherwise would have. Because we are committed to heading back to the states for hurricane season, we didn’t get to visit some of the places we really wanted to go. I know, poor us… We are highly aware that this is a very small price to pay to live and work in paradise. It’s actually forced us to slow down, and on the days when we feel stuck in a certain spot, we have really tried to dig in and enjoy the places we are temporarily calling home.

These are the things that came top-of-mind for us but if you have any other questions or topics you'd like us to explore, send us an email or leave us a comment. Our hope is that this info may help someone else getting ready to head over to the islands.

As we get ready to start heading toward the states, we’re coming to the realization that we will actually be leaving this place very soon. There is just so much beauty here. It’ll be very hard to say goodbye.