We left before dawn, in the dark, yesterday morning with the new plan of going straight through to the anchorage that would protect us from the strong winds predicted for Wednesday. We've learned to expect every plan to be subject to change. We knew it would be a long day. We had our sails up but we kept the engine on too. The wind was not in the best direction for us to sail at maximum speed. The water wasn't rough, but it certainly was ocean sailing. We had large swells but the boat moved effortlessly through them. You can see an example of the swells in the picture above. If we had Internet where we are now we would have posted one of the videos Bill made of the water. You will just have to wait for that, no hope of Internet on this side of the Abacos. Bill had been looking for Sturgeon - a sea sick remedy that is not available in the United States. He found some in the supermarket at Spanish Wells. We bought a supply and tried it for our trip up the west side of Great Abaco Island. Neither of us got sea sick but then again maybe we weren't going to. It happens sometimes, we never know. We seemed to have no side effects of the medication though so that is good.

As it turns out we were under way for sixteen hours. There really is nothing out here, and we saw nobody. We did go by the private island the Disney cruise line owns and one of their ships was docked there. There were a couple of commercial ships we had to watch out for too. I called one on the radio to make sure he saw me. I didn't quite understand his answer, but at least I knew he knew I was there. We had to go into the basin we are anchored in in the dark and that was a bit disconcerting but the opening was 300 yards wide and there were no rocks or reefs to worry about in the passage. You really can't see anything but you know there is rock on both sides of you. Of course we are the only ones here, so that helped a bit.

The weather is going to deteriorate throughout the day. We had a nice rain storm this morning before we woke up and I was glad to see that it rinsed a lot of the caked salt we had on the boat away. We had deflated our dinghy on Monday night, rolled it up, and brought it down below, in anticipation of heavy seas. We had to put it all back together today and hope that our failing dinghy pump doesn't fail yet. We were successful in pumping it up and need it to last at least one more time when we deflate the dinghy again when we head back home across the ocean.

We discovered that there isn't much to see where we are anchored right now. We will just relax for the next two days and then continue north, probably to Fox Town. It looks like we will be able to see all, or most of, the towns we've heard so much about in the Abacos after all.