Our Grand Adventure

11th April 2026 | Odometer: 1939nm | Bahamas

After what felt like months of waiting, my dad, Rusty, finally was going to arrive! We headed off to pick up the rental car, then drove up Long Island about a half hour to get to the Stella Maris Airport. We were a little early so we stopped to checkout a nearby beach on the way. The windward side feels like crazy high energy in comparison to where we are anchored!

Stella Maris Airport

The airport is super chill, and you can stand right at the fence and watch the planes landing. Eep, I was so excited! It had been such a long time since we had seen any family; watching the various passengers disembark I was bouncing on my toes until we spotted him. I had a few little mini tears of emotions, but quickly shooed these away for hugs and catching up on all the news! Rusty had made it!

Rusty is on a pretty epic journey around the world at the moment! Starting in October 2025, he headed off to Johannesburg for a month or so, then Zimbabwe, catching up with all his old friends and relatives from his youth. Then from there, over to England to spend a few months with my younger brother, Rory, and all his family in Bristol. Leaving England, he came to us here on the boat in the Bahamas, and after this he is off to Bolivia to work as a volunteer in an amputee clinic for a few months. Finally, a few weeks holiday in New Zealand, then he will be back to Brisbane, Australia! Wowser! It’s a bit of a joke between us whether we will get back to Australia first or if he will!

Columbus Monument

We were all starving as the flight had been delayed quite a bit, so we headed up to a resort nearby to grab lunch at the restaurant. We don’t usually have a hire car so once we were all restored, we set off exploring up the island to see the northern end whilst we were there.

The Columbus Monument is a beautiful promonory overlooking a tidal lagoon and some dramatic clifflines. The wind had picked up significantly since the day we arrived and the water was churning frothily through the mouth of the lagoon. Hearing the waves crashing against the brilliant white cliffs and being pushed around by the wind blustering over the edges of the outcrop made for a dramatic view. It was so nice to see a beautiful ocean outlook like this with someone new, I hate to admit that Ryan and I might have become a little blasé about these amazing spots, and seeing Rusty’s reaction to how stunning it was made us both re-evaluate and re-appreciate once more the incredible scenery around us.

We drove around the northern end of the island a bit then headed back to Thompson Bay, we were all feeling quite tired and ready to relax for the afternoon. The local dock is a bit of a wreck, so we dropped Ryan off to get the dinghy, and he met us around at one of the local restaurants where we could get Rusty’s bag onto the dinghy more easily!

We gave Rusty the “grand tour” of Perspective, which took all of 2 minutes haha! Then left him to get himself a bit sorted while Ryan dropped me off to do some groceries. The grocery store here is awesome! It has actual vegetables! and frozen meat! and ice-cream! My perspective of what makes a “good” grocery store has changed significantly in the last year!

It’s been quite novel having someone else here taking photos of us – and for Rusty, it was quite novel we were heading off on a dinghy to get our groceries haha.

We had an early dinner and sat on the roof to pop a bottle of bubbles I had been saving for the occasion. It felt wonderful to just sit and catch up together for hours on anything and everything.

Sleeping Onboard

It’s definitely disconcerting when you first start sleeping at anchor, the boat swings (sometimes silently) and the stars and neighbouring boat lights move around in what can feel quite a dizzying pace if you are looking out a window. The water makes soft splashing noises or loud, hard slaps against the hull as a big wave comes along. As the boat pulls from side to side on the anchor chain, the snubbers alternate stretching, relaxing and moving along their fare leads; making strange shuddering, groaning and squeaking noises that can sometimes get really loud or go for a long time. The refrigerator and ice box pumps switch on and off; and occasionally the water pump runs to maintain pressure. All of these noises are more intense when there is a lot of wind, and Rusty had arrived into an intensely windy week. It was so windy, we also added “the wind howling” to all the various noises, thumps and bumps that were around. Despite all this, Rusty made it through his first night on the boat, and I think he even got a little sleep haha.

At least if you wake in the night, there are nearly always interesting things to see in the water around, although compared to the Caribbean, the Bahamian waters are fairly devoid of life. I suspect this is because it’s a sandy bottom with no vegetation for incredible distances. Even with much less to see, we of course still got the reliable nightly needlefish, and on one occasion spotted this little crabby swimming frantically past.

Counting Churches

When we drove to pick up Rusty from the airport, Ryan and I had been in disbelief of how many churches there were, so when we reached the very northern end at the top, we started counting the churches as we went back to Thompson Bay.

The next day, we headed south to explore the southern end of the island and, of course, we continued counting the churches along the way. This turned into a bit of a game with the first person to spot a new one shouting out “CHURCH!” to claim it as theirs. Over the course of our exploring we counted 35 churches! Not bad for an island with only 3000 inhabitants! Although, to be honest some of the churches looked very decrepit and unused.

Dean’s Blue Hole

Dean’s Blue Hole is the third deepest blue hole in the world, with a depth of 200 meters. It’s quite stunning to see with the water entering a long shallow bay, then over a diameter of around thirty meters, the edges just drop away to nothingness. We waded around a bit, climbed the surrounding cliffs, then decided to cool off from the heat with a dip. While we were enjoying our swim some professional-looking free divers showed up and headed out to the platform in the middle to prepare – that has got to be one of the craziest sports out there for sure.

Back to Gordon’s Settlement

Gordon’s Settlement, right at the southern end of Long Island was so incredible when we first arrived there. Neither of us felt like we had really had a chance to properly appreciate it as we were quite tired after our passage and were pushing to head north straight away. So we decided to drive back with Rusty to show him the beach there and get lunch. Absolutely worth it!

I think this is the most stunning beach we will ever see… I’m not sure how we could top it really!

I was so full and lethargic after our lunch so Ryan took over driving and took us back to Thompson Bay. We dropped off the car at the rental place, and walked back to the dodgy dock to relax and enjoy the rest of the late afternoon. As always, I love all the colourful houses they have here! I swear I’m painting our house blue with white trim when we get back haha.