On to Georgetown

We ended up spending three nights at Allan Cay, and the wind just got a little stronger every day.  I did swim - to check the anchor, and to do laps around the boat - with Dan on shark watch from the flying bridge.  A nurse shark and I had a brief stare-down (it was between me and the swim ladder) and I guess I won, because it swam away.  Neither of us went back in the water after that encounter, not just because of the shark.  The wind shifted to a wind-against-current direction and things got mighty rough.  Too rough to sleep; most of us were up on watch for most of the night on Sunday (Jan 28) and one of the boats decided to pull up anchor and move to another location.  The rest of us watched him put his boat aground.  It's such a helpless feeling to watch such a scenario unfold, knowing you can't do anything.  We were too far away, and our dinghy too small and underpowered to handle the weather to assist the rescue of the nine people from that boat.  The people were fine, the boat, not so much.  

We bounced around another 24 hours before the weather settled enough for us to haul up our three anchors (two bow, one stern) and move on.  We spent the last two nights of January in Cambridge Cay, where we had a nice beach walk along the ocean side of the island and a beautiful sunset.

From there it was an easy morning cruise to Staniel Cay were we paused for lunch and to do a quick swim of the Thunderball Grotto.  Dan wanted to get some videos with the Go-Pro.  We'd been there eight years ago but had skipped the experience last year.  I am not fond of snorkeling in a cave, especially when the entrance is underwater, but we did it and he was pleased with his filming.  (Too large a file to post here, sorry.)  We went back to the boat and raised anchor to cruise over to Black Point for the night.

We love this little town on Great Guana.  The people are friendly, there's a post office and a couple small grocery stores, a two good restaurants and a woman who sells fresh baked bread from her kitchen, and the laundromat has stunning views of the harbor.  Dan was interested to see the town getting ready for the February First Friday Festival regatta at Farmer's Cay.  They had brought their Bahamian sloops to the town dock to rig, and a man was literally planing each mast to custom fit each boat.  We did not attend the regatta, but we did set to see the boats set off for Farmer's Cay in the morning.  

We went back ashore on Friday (Feb 2) for a short hike to the blow hole just outside of town proper.  It was a spectacular scene as the rollers coming in from the ocean were six feet or more, thundering underground to geyser up through the hole.  

We ended the day with a long jungle hike to the ocean side beach on Lee Stocking Island, after a short and pleasant cruise from Great Guana.  We had the beach all to ourselves, scavenging fan coral and a some re-usable plastic items from the flotsam and jetsam in the sand.  

Saturday, Feb 3 we made our way to the Georgetown area.  We could see the forest of masts as soon as we entered Elizabeth Harbour.  There are over 200 boats here, but they are well spread out, as the Bahamians have eliminated the glut of boats along the east side of this harbor by installing a lot of well-spaced moorings and closing down certain amchorages. I have a feeling the changes aren't welcome to those who come here every year to hang out for several months, but from a safety standpoint, this is a better arrangement.

It'll be tested this week, as the winds are coming in tomorrow.  We supposed to see strong winds from the WNW through the NE over the next three days, gusting up to 40 mph.  We're in a good spot in Kidd's Cove, right near town.  We'll hope there will be no rescues to be made at the height of this blow.