Bird Cay, Bahamas
25.23.874N
77.48.429W
As you can see, we made the big move last night/this morning. The anchor was hoisted at midnight and we were already negotiating our way to our path to the next island when the wind indicator pegged 30 kts. We made a quick decision that since it was pretty much dead astern of us, we'd just throw a couple of reefs in the sails and keep going rather than trying to fight our way back and anchor again. It was the right one, as we turned a 16 hour trip into a 13 hour trip with speeds of 7.5-8 kts. most of the way. It wasn't bad either. As long as it was astern, we really never felt it. We were also the only ones out there until morning when we saw a local coastal freighter slogging his way up wind.
We arrived at Bird Cay at 1:00pm with lots of sun straight up so that we could negotiate the reefs and coral heads. Tonight we're snug on the east side of the island so the west winds can howl all they want and it won't bother us at all. After making sure our anchor was securely set, we dingied over to Whale Cay and explored what appeared to be an abandoned lighthouse. It's stark white color was the perfect contrast to all of the aquamarine and neon turquoise of the surrounding waters. I took a couple of pictures to send to Kenny, our artist brother.
Dale has been more attentive today than usual; he was feeling bad that he had forgotten that it was my birthday. Actually, he knew my birth date, he just didn't know what today's date was. We had been talking about going to Nassau tomorrow and that we'd celebrate my birthday there and, if we liked it, stay for Thanksgiving. That was my first clue that he didn't know what day it was. Being the devious person that I am, I didn't bother to correct him either. He figured it out when he downloaded the weather information for tomorrow. He had lost yesterday, since it was spent idling away waiting for weather. He consoled himself by saying that he was sure I could find some small bauble in Nassau to make up for it. Hummm. Let me see. I'm sure I won't be able to find a small bauble in Nassau . . . but I could try.
