Our Grand Adventure

10th April 2026 | Odometer: 1939nm | Bahamas

Gordon’s Settlement at the bottom of Long Island was such a beautiful spot, but we knew we had to get to Thompson Bay about half way up the island so that we could get a rental car and pick up my dad from the airport on the 10th. So, even though we were still quite tired from the overnight passage from Inagua, we woke up around 3am , and started heading north. Even though it’s only a short distance up the coastline, we had a 10.5hour passage ahead of us to navigate around a huge sandy spit that sits off the western side of Long Island. Thankfully, the first part was through really deep water so we could simply wake up, and head out.

As we headed out, two other boats were also leaving the bay with us, so we formed a neat little trio heading towards the cut we would be following through the extremely shallow sandy back on the western side of Long Island. It’s incredible the difference in depth in this range; the dark blue area was 3000+ meters deep, then in the light blue area near the channel right hand turn we were in 1 to 2 meters depth! Quite a change!

Whales!

We were enjoying a following wind and sea pushing us along, with a bit of roll but not too bad. As we were about 3/4 of the way across the deep section we started to spot loads of whales! All around us! Initially, further out, but then getting closer and closer! A couple passed right by us on the boat which was really cool! We think these were pilot whales, because they were very dark with a distinctive forward angled plume of water. It was quite a large pod, and we counted at least six around us at one point.

Navigating the Comer Channel

The Comer Channel is the very slightly deeper path through the shallows west of Long Island; and it’s the only way to get from the northern to southern end, so it’s quite a busy channel. The depth transitioned from incredibly deep to very shallow in a very short distance and the colours were incredible. I felt like my eyes were having blue overload as every shade of blue surrounded us with a vibrant intensity. It was so stunning I couldn’t stop taking pictures and videos – not sure what I’m going to do with so much footage of blue water hahaha. It really was incredible though, and at each depth you started thinking, “Now, THIS is the most beautiful part!”. Haha.

A really interesting effect in this area, is that the shallow water, with white sand underneath, reflects so much light back up, the clouds start to reflect the blue underneath, especially on the horizon. This has the oddest effect of making the horizon look purple, and was really something to see.

Poor Jaimee and Jen copped about a thousand messages from me on the day – “OMG!”, “This blue is outrageous!”, “💙💙💙💙”, “We just saw dolphins!”, “I feel like Moana!” 😅 I think we were on a bit of a high coming through here. None of the pictures I took felt like it did it any justice.

Arriving to Thompson Bay

We are very lucky with our shallow keel that we can travel the Comer Channel quite confidently, though it definitely felt weird plowing through 2 meter deep water at 7.5knots haha. All went well, and eventually we arrived to Thompson Bay. We were planning to be here for a few days to pick up my dad and wait out some heavy winds that were forecast. We pulled up on anchor, and settled on the roof to appreciate the sunset with a rum. A pair of dolphins came skipping by which was a nice welcome to the bay. This would be one of the last not-too-windy evenings, so we also took the opportunity to fly the drone and got some lovely shots of the area and the sunset.

We were both feeling so happy and relieved to have made it to Long Island in time! We even had a day spare to clean the boat, top up our water and just recover from our hasty trip north. It was feeling really, really good!