23 21.64 'N:75 08.20'W
Thompson Bay, Long Island
[b] The weather forecast was yet again telling us that we would need to find some protection from strong winds later in the week so we decided to head for long Island with a stop at Flamingo key. This time we had Ti Amo, Migration, Helios join us on the trip. New friends, Ray and Jenna on Night Hawk went in the same direction but took the outside route while the rest of us sailed on the bank side. We all arrived at the anchorage within about 30 minutes of each other. We fished along the way again and landed 8 barracudas. Two of which were well in excess of 20 pounds.
The next morning the guys spent some time hunting. This time Paul found himself surrounded by barracuda. Seeing one barracuda while snorkelling is intimidating enough without seeing them in every direction you look! Paul collected a couple of conch and got a lesson from Ray on how to clean them. We made some conch salad with mango which was delicious.
Shortly after lunch we hauled up the anchors and made the short trip to Water Cay.
We had everyone over to 2 Outrageous for sundowners and a jam session. We stayed up later than we should have. We had a planned departure with Ti Amo for 04:30 the next morning. We did it though and had a pleasant pre-dawn sail under a full moon until it set about an hour before sunrise. The setting moon was bright red, there was some light cloud cover in front of it which made it look like a ship on fire. The early departure was a bit tough but it did mean that we arrived at our Thompson Bay, Long Island destination in the early afternoon. Thompson Bay is a very large anchorage and there were only nine boats in it when we arrived which meant we had our pick of good spots to settle into so we would be ready for the front that would arrive the next day. By nightfall there were twenty nine boats in the anchorage, it was a good call.
With the wind howling the next morning we set out to get some groceries, then bundled up our laundry and headed Tiny’s Hurricane Hole where we did our laundry and enjoyed a fantastic pizza. Paul tried out Tiny’s signature cocktail. Rum and tonic water with a squeeze of bitter orange. When we visited Long Island last year we met the owners of Tiny’s, Michelle and Jason, at a bonfire. They were working on getting their establishment going at that time and I remember them asking the cruisers who were there. What do cruisers want? The answer was unanimous, pizza and laundry. They delivered!