Fowl Cay, Bahamas
23.29.665N
75.42.431W

Happy Birthday Dad! Hope you had a good one.

As you can see, we've moved. Poised to set off on our new adventure. The weather is holding, so we're making our exit from Georgetown. There are 5 boats all anchored around an island that can barely hold 3. We started our day by leaving Red Shanks on a rising tide and high sun so that we could avoid the coral heads. Its rather disconcerting that our chartplotter is very accurate as far as depths and hazards that are out there but our positioning on that chartplotter is off. It seems the farther we get from our home waters the more of a discrepancy we see. I suggested that we recalibrate it to where we are now but Dale doesn't want to do it since we'd have to recalibrate it every couple of days the farther south we go. He said that we need to look at where we're going and stop relying on the chartplotter. I think we should use all of our charts, particularly the one right in front of me. We are using about 4 for this area. Two charts, 2 guide books with little chart-lettes in them; comparing what each has to say.


In preparation for our exit, we traveled back to Georgetown to fill up our diesel jerry cans, water cans, and some more fresh fruit and veggies. As it takes 2 days to get propane (you drop off your canister one day and pick it up the next,) we missed the boat on that item. We still have 2 that we haven't touched, so it's not really a problem.

We'll be traveling with Doc-No-More as both of us would like to visit Conception Island and Rum Cay before heading further south. Some of the other boats are making a bee line to Luperon and not inclined to do much sightseeing or diving.

I finally dug out my Christmas tree and we have carols on the stereo. I debated whether I wanted to do that or not. I figure that if you treat the holidays like any other day, maybe you won't dwell on the fact that you're away from those that you love. I really miss the kids and the holidays are particularly hard. I think Dale saw what I was doing and deliberately put the Christmas carols on just to kick me into the spirit. He says that for some reason or other, he thinks Conception Island is a good place to celebrate Christmas.

We'll leave at the crack of dawn to make sure we have plenty of light going into a harbor about 10 hours away. It doesn't look like a particularly difficult transit, although it does appear at this point that we'll have to motor most of the way. So it's off to bed early tonight so that we'll "don't worry" and "be happy;" especially at 6:30 am.