Oh my, another lovely day with light winds, sun and a high temp of 79. Not too hard to take; sorry all you folk bravely dealing with a “real” winter up north! Today’s sail required jib and main to eke out a tolerable 3 ½ to 4 kts and the 7nm trip lasted over 2 hours. But hey that’s the idea; travel slowly up the Exuma chain, sailing as much as possible and exploring as many places along the way as we can cram in.

Our selected spot today was Jack’s Bay on the west coast of Great Guana Cay. The cay is very long and offers many places to anchor with good protection from all but west winds. Jack’s Bay offered a small sandy beach and a couple easy snorkel spots- small coral head clusters. Our daring move today was to drop the anchor with the main still raised. Easy enough to manage in a light wind; let out the main sheet, drop the hook, drop the sail and then power set the anchor by backing down on it. An inspection later on showed the Rocna well dug in- the sand got a “medium” rating. Actually “medium” is a good rating, as the sand is not “hard” (Rocna has difficulty digging in enough) nor “soft” which means the anchor could more easily drag.

Clear water, a viewer and hoping the anchor is set

The best event of the day was talking to Benj. He leaves soon for Italy so went to check our mailbox one last time.

The beach was loaded with small shells, I mean loaded. Russ scraped barnacles off the second hull and checked out a nearby coral head.