Mayaguana, Bahamas
22.19.576N
73.01.816W

Happy Birthday April. We love you; hope you had a marvelous day.

This morning came like any other. The big storm we were expecting had not occurred during the night. Dale checked with the various weather reports and spoke with Roger who had heard that the storm had passed through Georgetown earlier in the morning. We all stayed on our boats and waited for the inevitable.

About noon we heard the ominous thunder in the distance. About 1:00 the wind shifted as expected and we turned to face a black cloud that lined the entire horizon to the north of us. The black clouds rolled towards us like some giant road paver. I gathered our computer, a hand held VHF radio, a hand held GPS, our charter plotter blue chips and placed them in the oven to hopefully protect against any lightening strikes. Dale and I paced back and forth from the bow to the stern making sure that we had secured everything we could. We battened down the hatches, fastened our cockpit enclosure completely, tightened all of the lines one more time and then waited for it to hit us.

I sat in the back of the cockpit searching the leading edge for signs of a funnel cloud that could drop down and form a water spout. The rolling clouds passed over us and continued on. About 2 pm, it started to sprinkle. Off to the left, we could see Port Nelson, the distant town on Mayaguana, getting a down pour. Off the the right, the ocean was in another down pour. We held our breath.

About 3 pm, it was clear that this was a non-event. The sprinkle was all we ever got. No real rain; no howling wind. Dale looked at me and said that he knew he shouldn't say it, but we've been blessed with good weather on this trip.

We spend the rest of the day reading about the Turks and Caicos. Calaloo wants to totally bypass the country but we and Doc-No-More would like to get off the boat and see the countryside. Calaloo says that as long as the weather holds, they're heading out tomorrow regardless of what we decide.