Trip today: 23 miles in 4.5 hours
Trip total: 1779 miles

Anchors were up at 7:45 and we followed Echo Beach out through the narrow rock cut. What a difference a day makes...the wind was light and variable, resulting in a flat, calm sea. Timing was everything today as we wanted to arrive at the notorious 'Current Cut' to ride through as the tide was ebbing. This worked very well and we shot through at 10 knots. Once through the cut we slowed to let a fishing trawler and his tow line of runabouts pass in front of us, on their way out to catch lobster. A while later we saw a very unusual sight that we picked up on our AIS. It was the m/v Antares, a very large 131 ft power yacht travelling at 23.4 knots...that's very fast for a boat that size! Interestingly, there was another AIS signal very close behind Antares, which turned out to be the yacht's tender, Antares II. We were curious and hailed the captain on the VHF radio, who explained they very rarely travel at such speed and were in a hurry to meet a tow boat that was taking them around through the shoals to Harbour Island. But we were astonished when the captain said that at this speed the boat was burning 210 gallons of fuel per hour...that's $945 an hour (USD)...can you imagine! It certainly made us appreciate Mar-a-Lago's fuel consumption of just under a gallon per hour when we motor...and nothing while under sail!

At noon we passed between the rocks into Royal Island's protected harbour...first to arrive for what would become the staging area for boats departing tomorrow to cross the Northeast Providence Channel and into the Atlantic with Great Abaco Island as their destination. By late afternoon, there were a dozen boats staged and ready to depart, including Echo Beach. Because both boats had positioned their dinghies on the foredeck, there was no happy hour. Instead, Roberta swam at least 500 feet over to chat with us ...I wanted her to come aboard, but she said she was fine treading water and chatting...so, for about half an hour I kept watching her feet and hoping a shark wasn't lurking in the area...this was their happy hour too!