We had another beautiful sail, close reaching at 7+ kts across the Exuma banks for many hours with a reefed main & foresail.

We dropped anchor very briefly at Highborne Cay. The boat anchored just to our starboard side was Avatar 5 which is the boat that went through the first set of locks on the Champlain Canals with Roger and Peter over three months ago.

We decided to move to Allen Cay almost immediately given the wind forecast and had a gorgeous close-hauled sail with just the headsail (6.8-7 kt, God I love this new headsail!) and dropped anchor in a narrow channel. The current was very strong, and we had our stern only about 50 feet away from some nasty looking shore but it was better protection for the forecast.

Turned out to be a rather sleepless night and we moved across to the tiny Bay created by South Allen Cay in the morning. This move was only a couple hundred yards at most- we’re talking tiny islands. This bay is out of current and much better.

We got out for our first snorkeling! There were some small bits of a few types of coral (staghorn was the only one I know) and some small fish, lots of conch shells and a few that looked inhabited. The water is so lovely to swim in. We met a few of the resident iguanas on the beach. Later we went over to Leaf Cay and met a much larger collection of Iguanas. They are clearly used to being fed by the tourists, but once they realized my phone was not food, they mostly stopped moving. We plan to spend another night or two here. It was nice not to be on the move today. Tomorrows forecasted south wind will give us another day of (mostly) R&R.