It is morning at the Old Bahama Bay Marina. There is more sun than I've seen in a while but the wind is still pretty strong from the north. It would not have been very pleasant at anchor off the beach but we had a calm, uneventful night here. The dogs hung out on deck all night but never went off the boat even though they could easily have done so. Two nights ago I was anchored off Mangrove Cay, a small uninhabited island about 20 miles from the nearest settlement. When I took the dogs to shore in the morning the tide had come up and there was no shore. We had to wade through about 20 feet of mangrove roots to get to a patch of dirt so that the dogs could do their thing. Jake took off into the dense undergrowth and scared me half to death as it would be very easy to get lost and disoriented on such an island. Dingied back to the sailboat in the pouring rain with an exquisite view of the sunrise in the distance. Then the north winds started and we had to move to a more protected anchorage on the other side of the small island. After pulling up the anchor I determined that the conditions were no worse for a 5 hour motorsail to West End than staying and hanging out at anchor for another day, so we went for it. It wasn't easy, but we made it here.