Thursday, April 30, 2009
We spent yesterday in Gr. Guana Cay. We had a nice sail from Man O War Cay to Guana with a 15 to 20 knot following wind and sea. The winds have finally started to calm down a little so moving around is comfortable instead of choppy and wet. When you are living on a boat you don't want everything to be full of salt water every time you move from place to place or have the boat bouncing all over the place and things falling everywhere. We've been to Gr. Guana Cay a couple of times this winter so we didn't spent much time on shore this time. We just stopped there for the night while waiting for a calmer sea to go around the Whale Cay passage.
To go from the southern Abacos to the northern Abacos and vice versa most boats have to go out in the ocean and through this passage. There is an inside passage but it is real shallow so only very shallow draft boats can pass through it. Anyway the passage has been very rough for the past two weeks. So today we went around Whale Cay and we are now in Green Turtle Cay. We motor sailed with our jib up and had a very nice passage, making over 6-knots. There were about 2 to 3 foot rollers with no breaking seas and a little bit of chop. It was quite comfortable. The wind and seas were from the back and blowing around 10 to 15 knots. We are tied up to a marina for a couple of days so we can charge up our battery bank.
A big celebration is going on here in Green Turtle this weekend. This is their 6th annual Heritage Festival. So we wanted to come here to enjoy the activities. Fortunately we were able to take advantage of the good weather so here we are.
John's part
Jerrie knows a lady who is married to a Bahamian. She worked with her in Florida 25 + years ago &we are hoping to be able to see her. She has talked to her on the phone a couple of times while we've been traveling through the Bahamas this winter. There was a mass of boats going around Whale Cay today as this was the first opportunity in a couple of weeks and everyone was waiting in various harbours. We are now at 26 46' N 77.20 W for those who care. We are in the White Sound harbour, which is relatively deep. We tried to get a slip in Black Sound, which is closer to town, but could not get a marina to answer on the phone or radio. We could only enter at high tide & we got here just in time. High tide being around 1330 today.