Wildcat-April 10, 2005

April 10, 2005

We were lucky enough to have Justin come and sail with us over the Easter break. It was so wonderful to have him on board. We had some wonderful sails with him and lots of good diving. The 2 guys caught lobster, grouper, grunts, sailor's choice, a jack, queen trigger, and conch. We had great dinners. It was so neat to watch Chris and Justin dive together. The time went by so fast.

When Justin left us we provisioned to head off south. We left Little Harbor in the Abacos on Monday, April 4th. We had lighter winds than predicted and much less seas. There were no complaints aboard our boat. We did a combination of sailing and motor sailing as the day went on. The trip is about 55 miles and it was quite a long day. We came into a great anchorage at the end of the day at Royal Island. On this island there are ruins from a plantation. We have lots of pictures to send when we get a wireless connection again. We had been to this island 12 years ago and nothing much had changed. We have just heard that Atlantis has bought the island and it will be interesting to see how that develops.

After Royal Island we visited Spanish Wells. We had been there 25 years ago and it was so different than what we had remembered. It was then, and still is today, an extremely prosperous island. The islanders catch lobster and send them to the US Red Lobster restaurants. So when you have a lobster tail at Red Lobster it's from Spanish Wells. They have just 2 miles of road on the island and there are 400 cars. A high speed catamaran ferry boat comes in every day from Nassau and continues on to Harbor Island in Eleuthera. The journey from Spanish Wells to Harbor Island is quite treacherous. You must navigate through lots of coral reefs and at one point you bring your boat extremely close to a beach. Most sail and power boats hire a guide to make this passage. So we enjoyed going through it at 30 knots on the ferry rather than sail around to it. Harbor Island is a beautiful vacation spot. As many beaches as we've seen I must admit that the beach there would take your breath away.

Moving on down Eleuthera we made an overnight stop in Rock Sound, Eleuthera and then sailed over to the Exumas. We started trolling for fish on these long journeys and caught a Cero mackerel. Unfortunately we also caught a 3 foot barracuda which we did not eat. We are currently anchored in Little Bell Island with 5 other boats. The water is significantly clearer than any water we have seen in the Abacos. We plan to go as far south as Black Point and as far north as Norman's Cay before we head off to Nassau.

We'll keep you posted as we travel along and as always we wish everyone fair winds and following seas.

Pam and Chris