Perseverance2

On Monday, Feb 3, we moved from Normans to Shroud Cay, a whole 6 miles. We had stopped here on our first trip and wanted to take the dinghy up one of the creeks that end at the other side of the cay. What a fiasco! We (actually, Cathy) made a mistake in timing, thinking that we were going up this creek at low tide and that the tide would turn and be coming in as we returned. Wrong! We tied off the dinghy in really low water, walked the beach for about an hour, and returned to a dinghy sitting in mud about 75-100 feet from the still receding water. Take off the shoes, sometimes sink to the knees into sandy goo with a terrible sulphur smell, on the count of 3, PULL the dinghy forward. Two people do not pick up a 9.5ft dinghy with a 15hp motor and carry it! Repeat the `1-2-3 Pull’, and as you get to where the edge of the water was, it has moved another 30 feet. Once we got it to water where it would float, we still had to walk it because our weight would sink it into the sand again. If the whole creek trip was 2 .5 miles one way, we must have pulled, towed, poled back about 2 miles. And the sun was setting! We got back to the boat about 6PM, 15 minutes after sunset, exhausted. We had had some wildlife sightings though - a sea turtle was swimming along side of us for a short distance on the way up, and passed two rays and a young shark on the way back. And there seemed to be a young shark that liked the area under our boat. We spotted his several times while we were in that one spot.

The dinghy trip kind of killed the desire to explore, so when the winds allowed, we moved south again to Staniel Cay/Big Major Spot. A large anchorage where 30 boats had no problem finding individual places.

We took a chance with light weather, and on Friday, Feb 7, we headed south on Exuma Sound stopping at Lee Stocking Island. We did some sailing that was really pleasant, but we did have to motor-tack eastward several times to gain the right path to keep moving and off the shore. On Saturday, Feb. 8, we left and headed into Georgetown, Great Exuma Island. There were approximately 205 boats in this area, spread between about 5 anchorages, but there was plenty of room. And more are arriving today, Sunday. On Saturday, we purchased some internet time and were able to pull email for the first time since Bimini and are getting these postings done. Tomorrow we see what BTC (Bahamas Telephone Co) can do for us without breaking the bank.