We moved south to Staniel Cay from Highbourne in anticipation of a winter storm. The deal with the storms here is that they produce "clocking" winds, which start from the prevailing direction (east) and then increase in velocity as they move around the compass 360 degrees. The problem with this is that there are very few anchorages/marinas that offer protection from west and north winds.

Anyway, the marina at Staniel has full western exposure, so we toughed it out at Big Majors Cay (just north of Staniel) with about 50 other boats. What an awful night!!!! The boat headed into the wind (north) but the swell came from the west, resulting in one of those side to side rolls every 3 seconds - we don't have hammocks so no sleep for the grown ups. The kids slept like babies, of course.

After the big blow we had a great time at Staniel. We snorkeled at "Thunderball Grotto" which is a sunlit cave where they filmed alot of the same-named Bond film. The kids were great - in order to get into the cave you have to duck under the outer rocks & swim underwater till you reach the cave. I was terrified about Cat but she's such an amazing swimmer now she had no problem at all. Parker, meanwhile, waiting on the dinghy, was moaning and crying so loudly I started yelling at him from inside the cave. The fish were spectacular.

We also rented a golfcart and explored the island. One of the wonderful things about the Bahamas is that there are no rules, and that is also one of the scary things. No one hassles you if you don't have your kids in lifejackets all the time, there are no seatbelts, the roads are easy to "roll" off of, and there are no warnings for cliffs, treacherous objects, etc. We got some amazing views of the Sound and the Bank (Exuma Sound is super deep ocean on the east side of the Exumas, Exuma Bank is a very shallow sea on the west side of the Exumas).

There is a great little "yacht club" here. The restaurant serves the basic Bahamian cuisine (conch burgers, beef burgers, chicken burgers) & we met some fun characters there. One guy had chartered a boat off Craigslist & we couldn't believe he had made it to the island. The boat literally was held together with duct tape. Another bunch of Canadians (tons of them by the way) were on year 15 of sailing their boat 2 to 3 weeks at a time from Granada.