Good Friday, April 10, 2009
18.2 nm traveled; Anchor dropped at 1:55pm

The full moon was beautiful last night. Blood red one moment, orange and golden the higher up in the sky it climbed. I was reading in our berth when Wayne called me up to check it out. Unfortunately my camera couldn't catch it in all its glory. This morning it was a beautiful ivory; quite large as it was setting against a royal blue backdrop of sky and turquoise water. Sometimes I get the pictures. Sometimes I don't. These would have been spectacular shots if I'd had my old manual camera. Do they still make film?

A little info about Shroud Cay - It's an uninhabited archipelago of cays and rocks that surround a shallow mangrove area. Most of Shroud's interior is composed of mangroves that serve as a nursery for birds, a wide variety of fish, crawfish (lobster), conch, and sea turtles. It has shallow tidal creeks that flow through the island (only navigable by dinghy on a rising tide) bringing nutrients through this unique habitat/nursery. The shallow sand bars are plentiful, many visible at low tide so that you can walk on them and explore the tidal zone. The coral heads near the moorings are visible and you can see quite a few species of fish. Unfortunately I can't name them - except for the barracuda.

The Tropicbirds are flying above us again, teasing me to take pictures as they fly into the morning sun. I took the bait twice and was unable to capture them with my camera so I'm going back to my morning coffee. Later...

I made pancakes and sausage for breakfast while Wayne dinghied over to pay for our mooring, then we had breakfast and released our mooring. There was another Bayfield 36 that came in and anchored quite a ways out last night and we both released our anchors at the same time. It looked like they went in to Highborn Cay though. We motor-sailed until about 11:00 then cut the engine and had a downwind run, then a nice beam reach until we got to Ships Channel Cay and turned in to the island to anchor. It was a beautiful sailing day with winds ESE 12-17 knots. Somewhere after leaving Shroud Cay I noticed that the water changed back to the emerald green and coke bottle green colors. I'm going to miss those fantastic blue hues of Warderick Wells.

We anchored off Ships Channel Cay on the Banks side and then went looking for some conch in the dinghy along the shore. There was a real nice reef that I followed along and in one of the holes/ledges - saw a lobster. His little (not so little) antennae were waving at me. Hmmm wonder if he'd have waved if he were still in season. My first one and I couldn't take it - lobster season is over now until July. I found a couple of conchs that were 8" and 10" but no pronounced lip on either of them. The 10 inch one had a good size muscle too. I tipped him over to see him try to wrestle back upright in the sand and thought hmmmm.... There's a tasty meal and a horn all in one. We conferred over both of them and decided that with no lip they were illegal to take and let them both go. I looked through a lot of the old conch shells on the beach, seeing if I could find one that I could turn into a horn, but they were in sad shape - Maybe at the next stop. No conch for dinner tonight so we had left over spaghetti and salad. Reading time.