We spent the last 2 days a few miles south of Morgan's Bluff, anchored in Conch Bay - that had NO conch! The route was between the barrier reef & the island with occasional coral heads strewn about. It was slow motoring with both of us watching for shallow spots. The guide book says you could do this with a 5' draft boat - I was scared a couple times with only 3' !!! We anchored about a mile from the reef - actually lots of clumps of coral-encrusted areas. Some are 5' to 50' around and some are the size of 2-3 city blocks. East of these is a rock/sand shallows with scattered small coral. That slopes down quickly into the Tongue of the Ocean (8000'). As the breakers were not something we wanted to brave with the dinghy, we stayed on the inside & hit several different outcrops. NO lobster ): Lots of fish, not many that I knew were edible. In close to 5 hrs of snorkeling over 2 days I had 2 non-fatal hits (they got away LOL). Got lots of exercise tho :D There were fish that I might have been able to spear, but I didn't know whether they were edible or not & didn't want to kill something I couldn't eat. I'm looking for a fish book in Nassau!!! LOL

Our guess is that the whole reef area has been fished out. With nothing to catch, we're heading to Nassau.

Sat afternoon - we entered Nassau Harbor about 4pm and anchored in a large area with lots of oter boats. We're going to a marina slip tomorrow in order to do laundry & re-provision the galley. We left Conch Bay about 9:30am, worked our way up the inside passage to a channel through the reef. The 1st half of the trip was motoring against light winds. Shortly after noon the wind strengthened & shifted so that we could use the sails (& increased our speed form 6 mph to 7.5-8).

Finally, I found out howw to add the Gallery link to the blog. However, I'll still include a shot of our 3rd crew member doing what she does best :D