Friday, February 20, 2009

Got up around 6:30 and put on the coffee and watched Sooo Fine 2 pull out of our anchorage pretty close to 7am. I tried to hail him on the VHF to wish him a safe speedy trip to Nassau but got no response. Sat and drank my coffee, enjoyed my sunrise. This was a really bouncy anchorage last night. It was another night without a lot of sleep. I'd just gotten used to the rocking motion and dozed off, when it switched motion and started rocking us side to side instead of front to back - a most uncomfortable switch. I noticed that Aurora and Sooo Fine 2 were bouncing quite a bit too. I think more so than us - Wayne said it was because they were lighter boats? I was surprised but not so surprised at all the rocking/pitching, if that makes sense. It's shallow enough here that the waves can't grow that large, but the fetch is such that because there's so much open space, they can build to their maximum ht with the all wind.

The winds are predicted to be from the N - NW 10-15mph today and they were pretty nice. We sailed the entire way and Aurora motor sailed. I wasn't sure if they were going to continue on to the Berry's or head to Nassau for a new sail, but Brigid hailed us a little after 8 am, and we went over the waypoints so they're still heading for the Berrys. I know they had to be back home by April 1st but after blowing out the sail, Nassau would be the place to put in for another one or for a professional repair. I'm glad we're heading to the Berry's together.

The water colors here are incredible. I've never seen so much variation in the colors and hues anywhere else. It changes from a pretty coke bottle green when there's sand below us to a dark jade when there's grass or coral rock at a depth from 10-20 ft. Then the next minute it changes to an aqua and then sapphire blue as you get into deeper water.

The only marine life I saw during our travels today was a flying fish. They are sooo cool to watch. They come shooting out of the water with their fins fluttering like a humming bird and travel through the air close to the water for fairly long distances.

As we approached Frazer's Hog Cay I hailed Aurora to see if they'd lead going into the anchorage area. I'd noticed there were a couple spots that read 1.3m and 1.7m on the charts, which concerned me since we're about 5'8". So they took the lead (they have a shallow draft) and we followed. We dropped the hook near a yellow sailboat from Minnesota around 1:30pm (my kind of time!) at 8.3 ft and swung out to 9.6 ft. The water color here is a light peridot color - beautiful with patches of jade where the grass is.

Aurora got their sail unfurled and down. They have another sail that they put back up (a storm sail). We dinghied over to see how things looked. They said it turned out to be torn and shredded as well as the sun protector coming apart so it appears we won't be able to help out much. They appeared to be dragging and reset their anchor a couple of times and needed to stay to make sure it set, so we went to shore to investigate the beach area. There's a ton of old conch shells, seaweed and basic trash (bottles, plastic, etc...) washed up all over the beach. I found a little conch shell I was going to bring back to the boat but a crab inhabited it. We walked in a bit and noticed a dirt road/path and on the other side of it - what appeared to be a lake? As we were doing this, I noticed a dinghy approaching the beach and thought it might be Aurora and came back to the beach. It wasn't them.