An overnight sail of 120 nm to Mayaguana. Easy sail down between Samana Cay and the Plana Cays and we only had to motorsail for 2 hours the whole trip which was a pleasant change. Our anchorage here is on the eastern most point of the Bahamas and is just a stop for a few hours rest before we head to the Turks and Caicos overnight.

For those of you interested, Rum Cay is surrounded by reef and was the second island discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 - at least that is the case if the Salvador Island camp of theorists are correct and not the Samana Island camp. Its apparently called rum cay because a West Indian ship carrying a bounty of rum was wrecked off her reef. In the early 20th century it had a population of around 6000 people who worked around salt production. Today its diminished to a few houses, a pretty white and blue church and just 60 locals. But it is meant to be the best diving in the region. We snorkeled a little this morning through bombies covered in lacey lilac fans, fish coloured in magenta or electric blues with orange and black stripes, and saw a lone red spotted grouper - one of the few lucky ones that has escaped a spear.

Yesterday we did very little except spending time with two Texans, Jan and Karl, on our neigbouring boat White Pepper. They have a solar and wind turbine setup which is compact and efficient and we have decided we will fit something similar to Iolea as soon as we can.

The pic is from this evening. We started pre-dinner drinks with Jan and Karl (left back), then Renska, Dutch and Ted joined us (Right), and finally Mary-Jo and John (front left). At dusk we fired our outboards and dinghied like ducks to shore and to Kay's cafe and 20 odd other boaters (in fact every boat in the bay almost) for dinner. Kay's is run by octogenarian Delores and is a shack with sand floors and odd tables and chairs. It was a pretty impressive buffet for 27 people all cooked on a single stove in a kitchen half the size of ours at home and delivered with an occasional jig to the music.

We are on our way to Rum Cay from Conception Island. As we were leaving a dinghy with 3 locals motored to our side and offered fresh conch (pronounced conk). We have had conch in cafes but not tried to cook it ourselves so we bought 5 large (as it turned out) ones for $10. Kate has a travel book which gives the preparation and a recipe for conch. It is pure muscle - similar to an abalone in texture (and flavour we found) - and needs to be sliced thinly, bashed until tender, then soaked in lime juice for an hour. After this you can bread and fry it, boil it or just throw it on the barbi. The popular dish for tourists is cracked conch where it is coated in flour and coconut and deep fried. There are pics of the actual conch in the photo gallery.

The photo is of Long-tailed Tropic birds as they swoop across the water and catch its reflection. We were anchored just off the beach and they danced around us all afternoon. Conception island is a sanctuary for migrating and nesting birds and island flora is also protected. There are remnants of a magnificent reef to the north. Giant elk horns that would have been stunning in their heyday have small patches of new growth but still are skeletal and furry - a consequence of warm current?

Our first night here we anchored further south along the beach. A lovely spot until nightfall. The wind dropped and a NE swell developed. We rolled continuously all night. Sleep, if you can call it that, was only possible by positioning ourselves across the bed. Next time we will try setting up a swell bridle (a line attached to the anchor chain and stern of the boat and which can be tightened or loosened to direct the boat's broadside away from the swell). Paul visited two boats north of us in the morning who were tucked behind the reef to the north and confirmed they had less swell so we moved in between them and slept well last night.

There are just the three of us here now. To our right is Paola Ola, a 40 ft catarmaran who acquired a rat at their last marina stop and have not been able to catch it. Apparently it crawled along a dock-line and ate its way through a flyscreen! We lent them a mice/rat mat trap which supposedly glues them to the mat - so a useful test run assuming the rat is still on board, which is not certain. On our other side are Jim, Linda (the fourth one we've met so far) , and their daughter Jennifer (16) who have been cruising the Caribbean for 2.5 ys on a 25ft sloop Opus and are still getting on famously. Jennifer has initiated Kate into the female cruising fraternity by making her an anklet. She is now a fully fledged "cruising chic".