Sunday, March 2, with the promise of several days of beautiful weather, we moved back of the Sea of Abaco to the little anchorage between Manjack Cay and Crab Cay. We got her anchor down a 12:45 PM and joined only a few other boats. After doing our boat chores, we settled down for a nice glass of wine and watched the sun go down on another perfect day.

Monday, March 3 thru Wednesday, March 5, we spent wonderful lazy days exploring the many little islands that surrounded this pretty anchorage. On Tues we took the dink to a small secluded beach on Fiddle Cay and picnicked under the trees and Toni spent the afternoon collecting the perfectly preserved seashells that littered the beach. Since the dink draws so little water, we were able to get into a little bay known as Nunjack Harbor. The shoreline also had a few little hidden beaches but it is also lined with mangroves just waiting for me to cast a fly. It seemed fish were everywhere. Maybe next time.

With the threat of bad weather and a repeat of the cold front conditions we experienced late last week, we pulled anchor on Thursday and ran back down to Green Turtle for protection. Good thing we did! We had a number of days of high winds and heavy rain.

Sunday, March 9 dawned beautifully and with high tide decided to move south into the southern portion of the Sea of Abaco. Although winds were light we were determined to sail through the infamous Whale Passage. Shouldn’t be any problem since we had made this crossing several times ……wrong! Although the winds out in the Atlantic began to pick up speed, so did the huge swells (6’ to 8’) that we had to take on our beam. These were not the Rage Conditions we have heard so much about but the rolling was very uncomfortable so we motor-sailed to get through as quickly as possible.

The southern end of the passage re-enters the Sea of Abaco through the Loggerhead Channel and leads directly to a nice anchorage at Bakers Bay on the north end of Great Guana Cay. We had anchor down by 3:15 PM and the winds clocked around to 070 and dropped 9 knots. The swells that had been rolling up the bay from the Loggerhead Channel began to lessen and finally the serge disappeared. We enjoyed another pretty evening in the cockpit. Southern Cross brought us through once again.