The weather reports have been so confusing lately. West wind/east wind/light wind/possible gales. We hardly knew what to do, but when the wind came up enough from the west to make our mooring at Shroud uncomfortable, and our plan to dinghy up to the north end of the cay to the mangrove creek unrealistic, we decided to take advantage of it and move on. It was a good decision.

We sailed a good part of the way up to Allen's Cay and arrived here to find only one other boat! Last time we stopped here, the little bay was chock-a-block with boats. Jim was pleased to have the Explorer chart on the handheld Garmin GPS so he could tell in an instant whether I should steer to port or to starboard as we rounded the corner and headed up along the shoreline. It has much better detail than the Navionics charts on our Raymarine chartplotter. (Thanks Stephen!)

By the time the sun set, 3 more boats had come in, and we all had a calm night.

On Tuesday, we stayed put, reading our books, dinghying ashore to visit the prehistoric looking iguanas. They are fascinating creatures - all knobbly skinned and webbed toes and beady eyes. A few of them have numbers painted on their backs this year - somebody must be doing a study. We laughed at one big guy who was either a senior statesman or a plain old bully. I tossed scraps of lettuce to them and he did his best to keep the others away, chasing after them on his awkward legs and even swatting at them with his right front foot. Do you suppose they are all right-footed or are there some lefties?

We searched the grassy shoals for conch. Unfortunately, the only live ones we found were too small. Gotta let them live for another year or two. Instead of fishing, we snorkeled around, checking out the bottles and shells on the bottom, admiring our well and truly buried anchor, and getting a surprise from an incoming motor yacht. Jim was swimming the short distance between the shore and the boat when I rounded the end of Madcap to see the yacht heading straight for him. I let out a mighty yell - to alert both Jim and the boat. Fortunately both of them heard me - Jim went into power mode immediately, and the woman on the bow of the boat said, "Don't worry, I see him." That was nice, and it was going very slowly, but it still made both our hearts beat faster to know that it was straight on course for him.

Several more boats came in, including a giant yacht that anchored, opened its "garage door" and slid a fancy dinghy and a seadoo into the water. They roared around for a couple of hours, then slid back into the "garage", the boat weighed anchor and headed off. There is something a little head-shaking about a middle aged guy in skimpy bathing suit and pot belly zooming in and out among anchored sail boats on his seadoo that got spit out the back of his multi million dollar yacht. It takes all kinds, I guess.

Dinner was BBQ steak, potatoes, cole slaw, washed down with a bottle of pinot noir freshly unearthed from beneath the berth in the aft cabin, and topped off with a handful of chocolate chips. We really need to replenish our sweet supply!