SV Windrifter42

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Passage: Green Turtle Cay to Great Guana Cay
We made pretty quick trip from Green Turtle to Great Guana Cay in about four hours. Our passage through the famous Whale Channel was uneventful, just a bit of a roll. With the big Atlantic on our port side I could see how things could get rough out here. We are now in the famed Sea of Abaco with lots of great anchorages and cays to explore. We followed an old cruise ship channel into Great Guana Cay - the cruise ships no longer stop here, but they had dug a nice deep channel so we had at least 10 feet all the way to the anchorage. We anchored on the northside of Great Guana Cay at Bakers Bay by early afternoon. We had to re-anchor as things here are mostly grass so not great holding. John and I got on our wet suits to have a look around. The water is so clear it was time to snorkel.. John also dove on our anchor to make sure it was holding. Nope, it was lying on its side just sitting there. It looked like we would have to re-anchor again - hauling up 100 feet of chain. But first we tried to just reverse hard and see if we could get it to did it. Voila. It held. Soon after John got out of the water he saw a four foot shark swimming around, we will not be swimming here at dust. We also checked out the bottom of the boat and looks like we definitely removed some bottom paint in the low spots of the ICW - and we lost our prop zinc. Best news is there is hardly any growth and we can see lots of lovely red paint - so we won't have too much scraping to do. John will replace the zinc when things are a bit less choppy. We had some fellow boaters over for snacks and talking. It looks like a front will come through on Tuesday, April 5 so we will head to Marsh Harbor and better protection. And Marsh Harbor has a "real" supermarket.