Waiting out the weather…

Regular readers of this space will have noted by now that we do a lot of waiting out the weather. We make no apologies for this, it keeps our sailing easy, fun, and safe.  A wise guy once noted that if you are on a motorboat you have to throw away your clock, and if you are on a sailboat you throw away your calendar.  In that spirit, we spent a couple of days “holed up” at Manjack Cay waiting while the latest in a seemingly endless series of cold fronts blew on through. Each of these fronts is the southern “tail” of the Nor’easters that have been repeatedly pounding the Northeast coast of the USA.  Hopefully, this was the last of the string!

For a place to be “stuck” Manjack Cay has a lot to recommend it.  Beautiful beaches, with great shelling, a shallow lagoon full of friendly green sea turtles, and a maze of mangrove creeks to explore.

Ocean side beach with shells, lots of shells.

Mangrove creek.

The big stars of the lagoon

Yes, it is this pretty…

Faster, faster!

This morning we pulled anchor and sailed east, along with a nearly a dozen other boats. With the understanding that the definition of a “race” is two sailboats going in the same direction, we are happy to report that Harmonie left the entire fleet in her wake. For a boat that is first and foremost, designed as a cruising boat, she never ceases to impress me with her performance. It is not unusual for people unfamiliar with these boats to describe them as “big, heavy, and slow.”  “Big” they might be, but they are not heavy (they come in as “medium” for their size), and slow they definitely are NOT!

Where we are now

Tonight we are anchored off of Foxtown, at the far northeastern end of Little Abaco Island.  The wind is supposed to be fading over the next couple of days, but the swells from that last North Atlantic storm will be “raging” against the out reefs here for another day or two. Once they die down, we will move closer to the ocean for the snorkeling and fishing opportunities.

Every settlement in the Bahamas has a pile of discarded conch shells.  Foxtown has a BIG pile!