Anchored at Shroud Cay tonight, Friday, No internet so this will get posted in a few days. Thursday afternoon we anchored in the channel at Allen Cay. It has two deep channels on each side with a sand bar down the middle. Charts show some of the sand to be shallow so set anchor at the windward edge of the bar to keep from swinging into shallow water. There are huge current reversals every day in these narrow channels between the shallow bank and Exuma Sound/Atlantic ocean. By 16:00 hours the tide/current was going out toward the ocean and the wind was pushing us the opposite. We think the anchor was dragging but not sure. If it slipped down in to the deep channel, there was no sand for the anchor to dig into which was the way we were moving. Lots of rocky shores if the anchor lost it’s bite. We made a decision to move out onto the bank with several other boats. A bit more waves but no big current to deal with. We anchored behind a mega yacht named Usher. ( not sure if it was the “Usher”). It seemed to have two additional 50 ft yachts to carry water tows and sleep extra crew.

Drove around the North end of Shroud today in the dinghy to a nice beach that we walked. On the way back, stopped at a couple of shallow coral heads and tried out Joyce’s new underwater camera. (See photo gallery Snorkeling )

Back to MiJoy and replaced the propellor shaft end zinc and scrubbed the propellor with bronze wool to get it smoother, may give more speed or less fuel consumption. First relaxing evening we have had since we left. Watched the sunset from the cockpit as we ate dinner.

On Dec 29, we sailed south to Warderick Wells. They have a very good mooring field that has great protection from the blow that was coming our way. To be safe, I decided to go early and not miss a chance to be on the better protected mooring balls. Turned out it was a couple of days before they filled up but we had probably the calmest area of the field. We dinghyed around the south end of Wanderick to the south mooring field and was amazed at how calm and beautiful it was. Walked a few beaches. Warderick is inside the Exuma land and sea park and is a no take zone. No fish, shells, sea beans etc. On the way back north, we found some friends, Reflections, in the Emerald Rock mooring field. They had arranged to move to where we were the next day.

We dinghyed about 2 miles north of the mooring field to the end of Long Cay. It was a bit cool so Joyce elected to stay in the dinghy. I slipped in and saw one of the nicest group of coral and fish we had found this year. Joyce suited up and we did a drift dive off the dinghy. If she has put sun tan lotion on her face, she can have trouble with it sealing. After about 10 minutes, she got back in the dinghy because of her mask. Only a few minutes later, I found the sleeping nurse shark. I gave it plenty of space.

The park station at Exuma runs on a shoe string budget. There internet link was down and our phone was not picking up a cell signal on the boat. Some had luck either in the second floor of the office or on top of Boo Boo Hill. I rigged up a canvas case and hoisted the phone up about 40feet up the mast. Joyce’s iPad dinged with new messages before I was back into the boat.

Weather reports said we had a couple of days of good weather so MiJoy and Reflections moved south to Cambridge Cay, still in Exuma Park. As the wind will blow 20-25 knots over the next few days, we are back on a mooring ball. With these wind speeds, the under size wind generator is actually helping a lot. Been a little cold to get out and do much. Joyce made a great pizza last night with dough made from scratch.

A fellow cruiser makes and sells a fridge optimizer control unit. He was at Warderick and I purchased one. In running the new thermostat cable, I found a one inch hole in the insulation on the back of our new fridge. May be the source of the moisture getting into and creating way to much frost on the cold plate. Cable in place, the other parts are simpler to connect up. We then have a digital readout of the temp and graphs of the run time of the compressor. Just what an engineer would expect in the first place. It also has a defrost cycle, that if I can get it to work, will save a lot of time pulling all the food out to defrost. It does lower the temp a little when solar has the battery’s charged and raises the temp at night a little when battery voltage drops.

Joyce tells me I’m writing a book so signing off....for now...lol