4/4/09 As predicted the winds were picking up, so it was time to move from Allans-Pensacola. We decided to move to Manjack Cay which is 20.6 miles and takes about three and a half hours. After anchoring, we relaxed and enjoyed surfing the internet.
4/5/09 We had a call early from Bill and Bettie Sue on Teamwork asking what are plans were for the day. They were going snorkeling and invited us to ride with them out to an ocean reef behind Manjack Cay. They anchored Teamwork in a sandy place between 5 or 6 large coral beds. We snorkeled them all! They were really beautiful and each one was just a little different. They were also tall and in very deep water. None of my pictures turned out very well. I think I was trying to take pictures
of fish that were too far away. Oh well, better luck next time.
We ate our picnic lunch on Teamwork in transit to the bay at the north end of Manjack. They took us to a place where we could get sea glass. This sea glass was in the water and you had to dive under to grab it off the bottom. The current was pretty strong, so it was a difficult task. In the past I had not done much diving under with my snorkel, but I did it today. Because I float so well naturally, if I am going to do much diving under the water and want to stay down instead of bobbing back up
to the top then I will need to get a weight belt. There was another small reef near the glass and we checked it out too. A great day of snorkeling!
After getting back to Born to Cruise we moved over to White Sound at Green Turtle Cay to be in a good spot for the next front. We slept well after a very busy day.
4/6/09 It was very windy today. We needed bread and lettuce so we took the dinghy over to New Plymouth. Our ride over was into the wind and we both had on our foul weather jackets, but anything that was not covered by the jacket was soaked by the spray coming over the side of the dinghy! Thankfully on the trip back from grocery shopping, the wind was at our back and it was like surfing.
I had broken the clip on my fin when we were snorkeling, so we went into Brendals Dive Shop to see if they had a replacement. They did not have the clip to fit my fin; thankfully we have extra fins that I can use and I will replace the clip when we get back to the US.
We were glad we had gotten a good spot to anchor because the wind was picking up and there were still boats coming into the very crowded anchorage.
4/7/09 This was our windiest day so far in the Bahamas this year. We saw winds of over 40 knots! Our big Delta anchor held well. We stayed on the boat all day. I used the time to make yogurt and granola. Wayne did more work on some new conch horns. One bit of excitement was the fuel tanker, Tropic Breeze, came into the harbor today. Two boats had to move so the Tropic Breeze had enough room to make it through the anchorage. We were thankful we did not have to move. We kept a close watch
all day to make sure no one near us was dragging on their anchor. Several boats did drag, but they were not near us. We left our GPS anchor alarm on so it would tell us if we were dragging and we did not. The GPS records how far you travel; we had swung back and forth on the anchor and covered over 2 miles!!! The winds were predicted to calm over night.
4/8/09 The winds had calmed so we raised the anchor and moved back to Manjack Cay. As we were finishing lunch a dinghy pulled up beside us. Larry on Dana Jean needed help with his computer and Teamwork told him maybe we could help. Larry's computer has a Vista operating system which we are not familiar with. It took us a while but between Wayne and me, we figured out how to resolve his problem.
We had a fun evening aboard BTC getting to know Larry and Dana while teaching them how to play Mexican Train Dominoes.
4/9/09 Once again Teamwork was calling on the VHF asking if we would like to go for a short snorkeling trip before their guests were due to arrive. We readily agreed. Bill found another reef for us to explore. This was a single huge bed of coral. At first we were disappointed that there did not seem to be many fish.then we swam around to the back side and found where all the fish were. We had another beautiful snorkel.
After they dropped us off on BTC we decided to kayak over to Crab Cay to look for sea glass. The "draft" on the kayaks is less than 3 inches but there were places that we still had to get out and pull them through the shallow water an hour before low tide. We went back to the beach where we had found so much glass before. We found some nice pieces but not nearly the quantity we had found before. The recent wind had put a lot of sand in the places we like to look so we think the glass was hiding.
We will go back to this spot and try it again sometime and hopefully find more. The tide was up enough that we had a nice easy kayak ride back to BTC. We were tired after a very busy day.
4/10/09 We once again took advantage of the free wifi offered by Bill and Leslie on Manjack Cay. It was also time to start cleaning and picking up. I am still not sure how the boat gets quite so cluttered and dirty in such a short period of time.
After lunch Larry and Dana joined us for a nice long walk down the beach at Manjack on the Atlantic side. There are some really neat rock formations on the beach that we explored and we found a few nice pieces of sea glass. Dana and Larry had never looked for sea glass, but they quickly learned how to determine a "Class A" rated piece of sea glass. On the way back to BTC we stopped and met Bonnie and Roger on Kokomo. Bonnie is the net control one day a week on the Cruiseheimers SSB radio net.
It was nice to put a face with the voice we had been hearing for 3 years. We did not get back to BTC until almost 7:00! Another nice day in the Abacos.
4/11/09 Time to head back to White Sound at Green Turtle Cay. After anchoring and lunch we dinghied over to New Plymouth to get fresh produce and bread. Once again it was an extremely wet dinghy ride over and I was soaked. Good thing it is warm out. While I put away groceries and did some cleaning, Wayne helped Dana Jean with some sail repair work. Wayne also got more dinghy gas in preparation for the busy 10 days ahead.
Once again Larry and Dana joined us for an evening on BTC, tonight we taught them how to play Farkle.
4/12/09 This morning we washed a load of clothes and are doing some final cleaning. My brother, Jay and his girlfriend, Ginger will be arriving from Colorado on the 11:30 flight. They will fly out on the 22nd. So far the weather forecast is for daytime highs in the 80's..Jay had snow this week so it should be a nice change for him. Now if the winds will cooperate we may even get to sail!
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