Onward to Exumas! First stop: Allens Cay

So much has happened since Nassau that I doubt I will remember it all or do it justice...part of that is the shear beauty of where we have been and part is that we are now living in so many sites sounds and sensations (see what I did there Jon?).  Right now we are moored at Warderick Wells in the Exumas Cays Land and Sea Park...on one side of us is a sparkling shallow sand flat, on the other is deep indigo, turquoise, baby, and 10 other shades of blue clear water with rays and fish and at least one shark swimming around along with the boats coming and going from the field.  We have breeze today which is welcome because we've finally reached the balminess we had been begging for...so of course we lament about how humid it is.  Humans, never satisfied are we LOL.  I have little bandwidth and less battery so will try to sum up the last two weeks in stages.  Honestly, Nassau seems like ages ago and Florida is another world and feels like years.  We are joyfully lost in time here now, lost in time and in nature and in the rainbow of blues surrounding us.

We woke the next morning in Nassau Harbor to a sand barge blaring its horn and yelling at us because we were too far in the "channel".  We moved then moved again across to the more established anchorage on the New Providence side where we were no longer nearly side swiped by various fast moving vessels.  We walked down one main street and went to Potter Cay where we had a beer at one of the many food shacks.  Nassau is not the same outside of Paradise Island or the area immediately outside the cruise docks--no glitz and glamor but it feels real...if 'real' is what you're looking for.  We did our final fresh foods provisioning at the "Solomons" Fresh Market store near the dinghy dock...the shopping center looked exactly like any shopping center anywhere.  Exactly.  The store was exactly like any upper scale grocer in the US.  Exactly.  For provisioning, it was really nice; expensive but nice.

The next morning (2/16/15) we set out at sunrise, bound for Allens Cay.  Mark had done something to his back so was supposed to take it easy (please note: he is fine now, no issues, perfectly fine and healthy) so Jon had the helm and mastered it like a champ all the way to the channel of our first Exumas Cay!!!

He's just kidding!

Allens!! Our first Exumas Cay :-)

Measuring depth along the sand flats behind where we anchored...little did we know

We made it!

It was magical to finally get to the Exumas!!!  We went ashore on Leaf Cay and reveled in the sand and the water and the couple of igaunas we saw who were still out after their noon time visit from the tourist power boats.  By night even more boats had come into the anchorage--it was quite crowded.  That night, we found out how in such a small space, current versus wind can do crazy things to boats.  At one am Mark got up to find a catamaran that had been very far away from us, was 10 feet off our stern--he had sailed up his anchor and was "right there".  It was extremely unnerving and the monohull that had been close but "ok" was right next to us--very very close.  The three boats were in a sort of current vortex due to tides and winds and the sand shallows and were circling and dancing around their anchors and each other.  The cat moved and Mark pulled us in about five feet to get distance from the monohull; he was up all night, bumpers in hand, watching that we didn't run into the monohull.  On the plus side, he saw the Southern Cross.  He says when we see it for the first time, we'll understand now why we came this way ;-)

The next day most of the boats left asap but we planned to stay to wait out a blow but it was amazing to have the anchorage basically to ourselves.  We moved the boat to a less vortexy spot and later that day tried our hand at Bahamian mooring.  We took a dinghy trip down to SW Allens and got our close encounter of the third kind with the iguanas!  Mark had a close encounter of the tooth kind--a little one took a grape and a big one came up in his blind spot and decided his finger was as good as a grape.  Again, he is fine, not injured or otherwise unwell...oh Mark I mean, not the iguana (who I hope is none the worst for his Mark snack).  We also snorkeled for the first real time and even on a tiny little coral head saw so many amazing colors and shapes and sizes of fishies and coral life and even the butt of a lobster!  We then took a final visit to the actual Allens Cay where we saw a large engine block on the beach at low tide along with other natural and unnatural discoveries.  That night we slept well because no boats were near us and our new anchoring had kept us within a reasonable space versus all over the place.

The next day was a rainy day all day so reading and movie watching and iPhone playing ensued...unfortunately we missed the new catamaran that anchored way too close to us for what we knew the conditions were.  And yep, when the tide and current started their game, there he was perpendicular to us and very close.  Especially considering we were expecting 30 knot winds.  On the plus side, we never got any closer than "boy that's close" and our back up anchor who took over when the winds shifted was a rock star.  It was the same Fortress that held us in NC during the 40 knot winds and it proved itself once again.  I got up a lot during the night but eventually got a sense of where that other boat was always going to be and finally just trusted that nothing would cause a bump and it didn't. Whew!

We left the next morning basically at sunrise because we just had to get out of that washing machine current wind tide insanity!  We were southbound for Normans and protection from the soon to come strong east winds...we've had a lot of that--getting ahead of blows, but that's part of the fun!

To be continued...