West End, Grand Bahama (Day One)

West End, Grand Bahama : (Day One)

We decided at the beginning that we would spend 2 nights here at Old Bahama Bay Marina in the West End. We were too exhausted from the Stream crossing to leave the very next day, and we still had laundry to do and further course planning. Also, once we looked around the resort, we found a lot of reasons to stay to enjoy the amenities!

First, we needed to check in with Customs. Standard protocol for private boats entering a foreign port is to first fly a yellow “Quarantine Flag”, showing that you have not formally cleared yet. Here is our flag:

Technically, only the captain of the boat is allowed on land until the clearance, but this marina was relaxed about this, and told us we all could get off the boat to look around since we arrived before the office opened. The marina dockmaster gave us the necessary paperwork, which took me almost 45 minutes to complete!




All 4 of us walked over to the Customs office, then after are papers were processed (and they accepted our $300 in cash as the fee for boats over 35 feet!), we went back to “Estella”. We all now have a Bahamas stamp in our passports! We changed the yellow flag to the Bahamian/Turks&Caicos flag as you can see:

Here are a few photos of the marina itself:









We decided to have fun before doing anything else, so we enjoyed the pool, playground, and beach, all adjacent to each other on the campus of the resort. There are hotel rooms and small house rentals here, as well as 2 restaurants and a small gift shop. Guests can also rent ocean kayaks, windsurfing equipment and bicycles. I think it would be a fun place for an extended family to visit, each smaller group renting their own space, however it is 5 miles to the settlement of West End and 25 miles to the city of Freeport, so it does feel isolated on the edge of the island. It also felt strange to see the border of the resort, where the lush manicured grass of the resort meets the dry low-lying brush of the native landscape. It felt like a mirage.


We were in a fog from feeling so tired, but somehow we did 3 or 4 loads of laundry and carted it back to the boat. I can’t remember much about the rest of the night….we needed sleep!