Sorry for the lateness in updates. Cell service is incredibly spotty out here. Why can't they just build more towers in the middle of the water? Jeez. /s

Day 8
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But four hours after our terrifying night docking at Old Bahama Bay marina, the sun shined its annoying bright rays into our retinas and we awoke. Not just because of the sun, but because of paranoias on both of our parts. I was scared of people coming on board to yell at us, and Shawn was scared he may not have tied off well earlier to accommodate the tidal shift. Both of our fears were proven wrong - nobody showed up until 7am and it was just the fuel guys who didn't really care, and our boat was still tied safely to the dock even though the water level dropped dramatically in just those four hours.

Had to wait until customs came into work at 9 to leave the boat and explore. They showed up a bit late, but whatever, we're on island time now. Shawn went in (as only the captain can go on shore to customs to clear) and a bit later came out with the friendly customs guy and paperwork to put on board. We flew the Bahamian courtesy flag in our broken little rigging for it, which looks sad and hilarious with how low it is to deck (because of course that broke).

Our comforter and sheets got soaked from the crossing because there are leaks in our windows and there was rain and water breaching over the bedroom yesterday, so we ponied up the $3 and just dried them. We could've washed them too, but it just didn't seem worth it.

While the load dried we explored the marina, walked a bit on the beach, looked at the restaurant prices and noped back to the boat to eat egg ramen instead. I threw out all the trash and cooked while Shawn got a much needed nap and we went on our merry way at about noon.

Signal quickly left us as we started our journey to mangrove cay. Winds were idiotically strong the whole day. The jib appears to be fraying in at the edges and we're worried if we stress it that it may rip. 25-30kt winds are not exactly "relaxing" for a sail. 15+ is already pushing it, and winds never dipped below that all day (unless you count split seconds of 14.7kt readings).

So we had to motor most of the whole day. Again. This is not turning out to be a very saily cruising adventure.

At about 6pm we thought maybe it'd be nice to stop early and try anchoring in the sand. At first it appeared our anchor set pretty darn well, but after closely looking at our GPS and using the handy dandy anchor app we found that we were drifting.

Savvy cruisers may think at this point, "wait, just *one* anchor? in the Bahamas?!" We thought we had two anchors, but we just discovered the second anchor actually needs to be assembled and not all of the pieces are present to assemble it. We have most of the parts of an anchor, just not all the parts to put them together as they are tiny and get lost easily I guess. If we find what we need on one of the more inhabited areas we will certainly assemble it.

So surprise! Only one anchor! Greeeaaaat.

Anyway we had to pull up the one anchor. Which, despite it drifting, was not as easy as you'd think. In fact, it was probably one of the most annoying anchorings to remove. The ironies of life.

We had to continue to mangrove cay for safe anchoring, it was 5nm away at that point, it was 7pm with sunset at 8, and we were getting average speeds of 3kts. This sailor gobbledygook translates to "we're anchoring in unfamiliar waters after dark again", which is just as dangerous as it was yesterday. But at least it's only 5nm away in the dark as opposed to 16nm away in the dark like yesterday. So we got that going for us.
No signal to have Heather guide us, but she did enough of that already before signal dropped. THANK YOU AGAIN HEATHER YOU'RE SUPER WONDERFUL

In the end, we got in a bit after sunset but before darkness had totally fallen. There was another boat anchored near where we wanted to, so we used them as a guiding light to where we wanted to go. Anchor set with no fuss. We'll have to move before noon because of the tides, as we're in 4ft of water right now, but we want to leave before then anyway.

Put the screens up for any potential noseeums and sprayed Off like we were creating a ritual circle with our house to expell evil spirits. Then I put the sheets on while Shawn made grilled cheese sandwiches (he's weirdly good at making them). You see, earlier I discovered a box of tomato bisque soup in our stores that was due to expire 06/04/18. We also have a ton of mozzarella and bread, so we had the fixins for a delicious dinner!

Tomorrow we're going to Great Sale Cay and just anchoring for the whole day. It's not a beautiful location or anything, but we need to just get a damn break. Our vacation is stressing us out, and that's the opposite thing a vacation should be doing.

Day 9
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Slept in until at least 9am and got on the road... Er, water, I suppose - at 10. Motored to Great Sale Cay and got there around 5pm. We haven't been going very fast due to the wind.

Anchored, and the anchoring seemed secure so we dove on the boat to scrape off barnacles. You see, we haven't ever done that because our home water not only has terrible visibility but is also literally filled with poop. Human feces. And urine. Every time it rains too much they flood the lagoon with millions of gallons of sewage because the system can't handle that much water. You risk ear infection going in there, or worse.

Needless to say the beautiful blue waters of the Bahamas are far better to do this sort of task in. Scraped quite a bit off, so we're hoping this improves our speed. We could be sad - "if only we had done this sooner we'd have been going faster!" - but there wasn't really a good opportunity to do this before today, so we'll just be thankful if we can stop crawling at 3kts and maybe get up to blistering speeds of 4 without going full throttle.

After the scraping we grilled chicken and realized, despite the charts stating that this was good anchorable water, we were drifting pretty significantly. So we had to raise anchor and dropped it closer to the other boats at the cay. Yet again, raising the anchor was a pain despite the dragging. Anchoring in the Bahamas is definitely not Easy Mode and I would not recommend it for first timers. We noticed a massive yacht (like an actual fancy one, not our "technically a yacht") drift and have to reanchor which made us feel better.

Yet again reanchoring gave us signal. If you waggle your arm with the phone in the right spot (port stern) when the wind and stars align juuuuust right and you have the favor of the Phone Signal deities you can get signal for a split second to get and send text messages. Not enough for data, hence why I didn't post this the same night.

I finished a borrowed book - Voyage of the Basilisk - which is the third in a series about a lady dragon naturalist and happens to be set aboard a ship the whole time (the previous two were not). Books about voyages while on a voyage!

The next borrowed book I have to go through happens to also be voyage-related, though that one about the (purely mythological) settling of Ireland by the Milesians. This myth has been put to rest in the past 20-30 years by historians, since there's simply no evidence of a migration, only of trade between the two. But anyway, it will have boats and should certainly be a good read (Irish historical/mythological fiction is definitely my kind of reading!)

Aiming for Foxtown (or is it Fox Town?) tomorrow. Looks to be about 25nm so we should make it within the day. Hopefully we can stay the night there and it has good holding areas, because it seems the Bahamas are generally crap for anchoring except in specific spots. Why not make mooring balls where cruisers go?! Whatever.

12am update : this anchoring spot wasn't totally secure either! My anchor alarm went off saying we had drifted 100m (you can specify a range... And 100m is a loooot). Instead of waking up though, I half asleepdly shut off the annoying beeping thing. (I have no idea what the hell I was thinking)
An unspecified time later Shawn wakes me up and we turn on the instruments to find we're in 3.7ft of water (started at 8) and have drifted far from our anchor spot
O_O

We raise anchor without much fuss and putter back to our original anchoring spot and just.. Dropped anchor. What do we do? We're in the "good holding" area on the chart, with the other boats. We have our only anchor caught well. We do the only thing we can and hope we can continue to sleep.

The main lesson to be learned is that the guides aren't kidding - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A SECOND ANCHOR. Yeah, we should be laughed at for not checking our anchor was assembled, but why the hell wouldn't it have been when the previous owner was intent on going to the Bahamas? If you are told you have a second anchor, the bag it's in weighs like an anchor, and you see chain and anchor bits in the bag I think any other person would also assume there was an (assembled) anchor in the bag. Why the hell didn't the previous owner mention this to us?! And why would you want to assemble an anchor? Points of failure on an anchor seems dumb.