Bahamas

We arrived in West End, Bahamas at about 8:30am on Thursday. The harbor entrance was fairly narrow and with the south wind (& waves)that had helped us overnight, the entry had some pretty big waves tossing us around as we went through. A slight white-knuckle moment for me, but little did I know this would be surpassed just a couple of hours later.
We tied up with assistance of a dock hand as it was blowing briskly even in the protected harbor. I went to Customs & Immigration which was 50 feet from where we tied up. It took about 45 minutes to make it through the paperwork and they made my wallet lighter by $300. This was by far the most I've paid for entry into any country. I think the next closest was $50 somewhere in the Caribbean.
After we had successfully cleared in, we took a very short walk around the West End marina area. There were a few small shops and some fairly new/tidy fourplex condos or rentals of some type dotted along the beach but overall things looked pretty deserted.
Knowing we had some significant mileage to make yet, we headed out. Just a half mile to the north was the first location to get up on the shallows of the Bahamas bank. We could see the waves breaking over the entire length of the bank's edge but the area where our chart said the channel was looked like it might be a little less violent so I decided to go for it. Also, the marker shown on the chart was missing but the GPS data on the electronic chart had been quite accurate so far so I decided to trust it. So with both engines on I squared the boat to the waves and went for it. The first wave was about 3 meters with a curl at the top and we were able to surf down it and stay straight down the face of the wave. By the time of the third wave though it was a completely different story. The wave was big enough (4-5 meters?) and breaking enough that I couldn't hold the boat straight down the face of the wave as we surfed down it. We started to turn sideways as we slid down the face of the wave in spite of my efforts to counteract it using the helm turned hard in the opposite direction; pretty scary for me as 1) I was worried about the depth and whether we would hit bottom due to the waves height 2)the only likely way to flip a cat is to have a breaking wave help you flip over.
I yelled to Geoff to close the door as he was inside in the salon at that moment and I was worried the wave would break over the stern and flood the cockpit and the salon afterward.
Doug happened to have gone forward to the front deck before this all started and seemed to be having a great time in spite of my personal (internal) fright.
I could feel the boat list to port as we slid down the wave and I had that really bad feeling that proceeds trouble.
But as we got to the bottom of the last breaking wave the boat straightened out and we we're successfully on the bank.
The waves on the bank were minuscule compared to what we had just been through and all was good.
Doug came aft and as is his usual sense of humor asked if we could do that again.