We were going to go about 14 miles into Marsh Harbour today and anchor. But the wind was every bit as strong as the forecast (15 to 20 knots out of the northeast) and we decided not to go. Ed and Karin on Passages are also going in, and since they’ve done this at least 10 times before we were going to follow them in. They decided it was too windy to hassle with, so we readily deferred to them. We can wait. But it is the first of May already! We’ll probably start listening for the weather patterns and try to figure out a good crossing window.

Since it was so windy we stayed aboard most of the day. I took the time to add names to many of the waypoints that I entered into our chartplotter early in our journey to the Bahamas and to put the waypoints into groups so we can find them and use them if we come back to any of these places next year. Bud and I both finished a book Karin lent us about Little Harbour, the place we had to skip because it was too rough to cross there. An artist and his family from Toronto by way of Massachusetts settled the area in the early 50’s. They homesteaded and started a foundry for casting bronze sculptures. It was an interesting book and has made me want to go see the community. There was no road into it until 2000. I’m hoping this time when we go to March Harbour we can take the time (and money) to rent a car and drive there, since we don’t want to take the boat back that way.

Besides the little “pond” that’s just south of us, there’s another dock just north of us, and this one has a roadway cut back from it. Bud agreed to go explore that. We had our dinner at about 4 PM, and then fed Fuzzy, so while there was still plenty of light we could take Fuzzy ashore and do our exploring. The road is cut through the brush and the ironshore flattened, but it was covered with sharp gravel that was from the crushed ironshore. I still ended up carrying Fuzzy. The road led up to the center of the island where there was another road that ran down the center the long way. It wasn’t very clear going north, but was still easy to walk on heading south. It ended up leading over and then back down to the little beach at Tilloo Pond. I was able to get this picture showing the Atlantic on the left and Tilloo Pond and the Sea of Abaco on the right. You can see the wave throwing spray up over the island. We figure the island is about 30 feet above sea level at that point. Fuzzy got to walk around on “his” beach and then we headed back.

If the wind is still too strong to move tomorrow we are hopeful that at least by Tuesday we’ll be able to go to Marsh Harbour. We’re running low on water, we need to do the wash and Bud is almost out of beer. When we get to Marsh Harbour I’ll also get Internet and be able to post these.