The weather has changed and we are having a spell of great
days.
Our last week on the mooring ball ran out and we headed out
to explore. Our first stop was a short
sail and motor to an area called Talloo Bank.
It is a shallow sand bank that is almost exposed at low tide and a long
sand beach. We spent a day there looking
for shells and searching for the elusive conch.
In the morning we tried looking in a little deeper water using the
dinghy but the breeze was causing too many ripples on the water to see the
bottom clearly. We gave up and pulled
anchor with plans to go to Snake Cay.
The guide books show a shallow area inside the small islands that is
great for kayaking or dinghying around. Unfortunately
the anchorage was too rough being exposed to the wind which had picked up. We continued South to Lynyard Cay. On this leg we watched as our chartplotter
recorded that we had gone 1000 nautical miles since this trip started.
Lynyard Cay is almost the furthest South of the Abaco Cays
and is across form Little Harbor. There
are several nice beaches and we took the dinghy to one of them for shells and
conch. Cori found some shells and I
found several conch but all too small to keep.
I’ll come back for them next year.
The next day was windy and a little rough so we just hung out and
enjoyed the solitude and listened to Nascar on the XM radio. On Monday the wind shifted more to the East
and the sea calmed down and it was time to go look for shells and conch. I turned the dinghy over at the beach to
scrub the bottom. I should have done
that a lot earlier, there was a lot of growth.
After that I snorkeled around looking for conch. I found a lot of empty shells but no live
ones. On Monday Cori went to another
beach and I did a bit of boat maintenance and reading. Late afternoon nine boats came into the anchorage
having crossed over from Eluthera. Our
friends Ken and Fran on Release were with them.
Tuesday it was time to start back to Marsh Harbour since we
needed to meet with Immigration and extend our cruising permit. We raised all three sails and started the
best sail of the trip. We had winds of
15 knots on the beam and were doing an easy 7 knots. When turning downwind we only dropped to 5
knots. I don’t get better than
this. As we got closer to Marsh Harbour
and our course took up more into the wind we had to trim in the sails to point
as close to the wind as we could. As
Cori was cranking on the winch something inside it malfunctioned and released,
allowing the handle to spin under load.
It hit her in the chest and then slammed her left wrist. It swelled up immediately. It was time to drop the sails and motor
in. Luckily we have some space in the
freezer for ice and we used most of it to keep her wrist iced down. Once at anchor we went to shore and ran a couple
of errands, stopping to check in with Kevin at Island Boy to let him know that
some mail was coming for us (he agreed to be a mail drop for us) and get some advice
it we needed to have the wrist checked out.
A skype call to Helen for advice on the wrist was all it took, no trip
to the clinic. Dinner was at Conchy Joes
with Ken and Fran.
Wednesday we made our trip to Immigration and got our extension
and picked up more groceries and had a propane tank refilled. Errands done we spent the evening relaxing.
Thursday we pulled anchor and had a relaxing sail to Great
Guana Cay where we had a reservation at the marina to tie up and plug in. We haven’t been plugged in for over a month
and the batteries need the attention.
Our weekend will be taken up with partying at Nippers. This is the weekend for The Barefoot Man
concert and it is reported to be a big party.
One of the others called it Spring Break for Old People.
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