Saturday, June 20, 2015

Cheerio Bahamas!

Drifting North through the Islands with Vagabund and Island Kahaya, we stopped at Alan's Pensecola
Cay! Tradition has it one creates a sign with your boat name and visit date and hang them in one of the trees. We were ready! Zach was nominated, being the tallest to climb the tree to hang our signs up high! The deed was done!




Moraine Cay was our next stop! With cottages to rent we were lucky to find it uninhabited. Two beautiful beaches, one on each side and the reef off of it one of the best snorkel spots we found.

It was with reluctance we lifted anchor and stopped at Old Yankee Cay, Strangers Cay and Double Breasted Cay. Double Breasted has explorer potential, we discovered shark and Baracuda swimming lazily in the shallows. But this time the weather was not co-operating and with storms en route we decided we wanted a more secure anchorage.

This took us to Grand Cay. A friendly colorful little village. We spent the afternoon exploring, stocked up at Rosie's little store. Drank beer and discovered Jollys aquarium! His oldest inhabitant is a turtle who has been in there eight years and a Goliath Grouper who has been there four years. While it would not pass any requirements by environmentalists it was interesting to see. A late lunch and early supper of Cracked Conch was delicious at a nearby take away!


Wanting to get nearer to a dive site for our last scuba dive we moved to the Western bay of Grand Cay! We discovered a treasure. Had we had time we would have stayed a week. Heading out to the dive site on our dinghys we watched a squall that has passed the anchorage turn and head back to the boats! Dive abandoned as we raced to get back before it did. However nature was once again playing with us and we no sooner got close to the boats when the squall dissipated!
Corrupting Vagabund!

We settled for tea and cookies on Vagabund before heading into the bay to the beach! A large bay with rocky outcrops protecting a nursery of a variety of tiny fish, we could not resist snorkeling before taking advantage of the white sands and clear water to have our last Talking Heads of the season!

The next morning we waved goodbye to Bahamas for the season and headed out into the Gulf Stream. It wasn't long before we were able to hoist the spinnaker and off we went. The God of the wind was playing with us once again. The next morning the wind dropped and the spinnaker folded. We had just given up and started motoring resigned to another night at sea when the wind came up again! Not quite enough to get us to St. Augustine before sunset. So with the inlet in sight we had to turn and spend the night sailing past! As soon as we could we turned back to reach the St. Augustine inlet just after sunrise and sailed in and hooked onto a mooring ball. 
Dolphin escort!


A catch up on sleep before attending to all the official requirements of checking back into USA.