11th December

22 25 N
73 08 W

Weather: sunny with cloud cover, wind 10 to 15 knots E, waves 2 to 4 feet

ONLY ANOTHER 14 MORE SLEEPS!

I finished yesterday saying that we were all alone, not a soul in sight, out behind the reef at anchor, well just as we were going to bed Gerry went out to make sure that we had all our lights on and that we weren't moving anywhere and he shouted down to me "Nick, come and see, there's a boat behind us".
I shot out of the cabin and sure enough in the dark there was a group of lights right behind us, it was difficult to make out what it was but obviously some sort of vessel. We watched for a while and concluded that it was at anchor there, we were no longer alone! Satisfied that it wasn't heading any closer to us we went to bed and had a reasonable night, although the wind whipped around us all night we didn't roll or pitch too much. The morning showed that we were in the company of the sail boat that we had seen in Betsy Bay 2 nights previously, he had obviously grown tired of the excessive rolling there and decided that he would be better off tucked up behind the reef in Abraham's Bay, it was a good choice as we think that he is single handing his boat and the last thing he would want is to be tired and dealing with having to move his boat. We had a very civilized breakfast as there was no hurry to do anything, we weren't going anywhere today. Gerry got the fidgets, he just can't keep still, and decided that it must be time to change the engine oil filter and the Raycor fuel filter as we had run the engine for 100 hours and it was due for a change. Out came the plastic gloves and bags to contain the used filters and the tweaker made short work of changing the two filters. Out of the blue there was a radio call out to "the boat at anchor in Abraham's Bay", that would be one of two so Gerry responded and got chatting to a lady on a boat called Passage that was at anchor near the town. The main topic of the conversation was the weather - what else do sailors ever chat about?! It turned out that they knew we were the Aussies, not sure how but we think we have seen them somewhere else on route, the lady was a near neighbor - a Kiwi! They too are heading towards the West Caicos and wanted to know our plans considering the weather information we had for the next few days. We said that we were going to stay until the weekend when it looked a bit more favourable, they weren't sure when they were going to take off and hoped to leave a bit sooner as they had already been in Mayaguana for a few days longer than us. We agreed to share any new weather data and said goodbye. By lunch time we had lost our anchoring neighbor, he had taken off and made his way across the coral heads towards the town anchorage, he apparently draws far less than we do or maybe it was something we said! The afternoon passed in a blur of doing nothing except reading our books and watching the first couple of episodes of a series called Dark Matter (thanks Computer Nerd, what would we have done without you!). Priss put in the occasional appearance between sleeping, it seems that she changes her sleeping spot every couple of hours just to keep us confused as to where she is.
In the afternoon we decided that the time was right to set up our Aero garden, a small, fully contained hydroponic garden which runs on 12 volts. It comes with 6 holes to grow whatever vegetables you want, you just add water, fertilizer and plug in to the LED lights provide the correct growing medium. I know what all of you are probably thinking but we planted mint, thyme, parsley, dill and 2 types of basil. They should start germinating in 4 to 7 days and maybe by new year we will have something worth eating!
I ducked out to get a couple of sunset photos, no green flash though as the sun was setting behind clouds. We had dinner and watched another movie and just before going to bed checked to see that the boats at anchor near the town were all present and accounted for, it would seem that our neighbor from the previous night had headed off and wasn't spending any further time in Mayaguana, I hope he has plenty of fuel on board as he is going to be bashing into the wind and waves, he must be in a desperate hurry or hadn't gotten a good weather forecast, either way we wish him well wherever he is headed.