Spanish Cay

 After a windy, somewhat rolly night at Great Sale Cay, we all pulled anchors at 7am and made the 40nm run to Spanish Cay where we met up with the crew of N37 Midnight Blue.  Mark and Cathy have been in the Bahamas for six weeks already and have had some great adventures in the Exumas, Eleuthera, and Abacos.

After tying up, the extremely helpful folks at Spanish helped all the captains get through the customs & immigration check-in process and we are finally, legally in the Bahamas.  Everyone relaxed a bit this afternoon doing chores and minor repairs except Drew - who decided to step up off of Chutay and just continue across the dock and right into the drink!  Hey, he gets big points for his style and grace!

                               Drew carefully inspecting his swim platform

At 7pm we all met up in Spanish Cay's restaurant, "The Point House" for our big "Welcome to the Abacos Dinner".  Chef Cindy did a spectacular job on the fresh cracked conch, Spanish Cay grouper, lobster, and all the rest.  There was great conversation as Mark and Cathy told us about their Bahamas experience so far, and almost everyone took advantage of the amazing Key Lime pie and rum cake for dessert.  Many thanks to Ken Fickett for picking up the tab!

                Intrepid Great Harbour crews enjoying dinner at Spanish Cay

The Spanish Cay bar is renowned for its array of fun games - especially the 20' long frictionless shuffleboard game. While some engaged in a big shuffleboard tournament, others played ping-pong or pool.  It was great fun, but by the time everyone stumbled back to the boats, the wind was absolutely HOWLING.  Dennis and I had to make some adjustments to the lines on Mother Ocean as she was straining at her lines and threatening to do damage to her hardtop on one of the pilings.  We got everything situated and I retired to my comfy watch cabin about 11pm to work on this blog post.  If you look at the picture above - and the first paragraph... Well, that's as far as I got before I closed my laptop and went to sleep.  This blog entry was destined to become a two-day entry!

                                                       Drew at the shuffleboard table

I am sure EVERYONE in the group slept well last night as we woke this morning to very decent weather and cool temps.  Today's plan was to stick around Spanish for the morning, enjoying their amazing breakfast, doing some island exploring and maybe a dinghy excursion or two. We would then check out at 1pm and head south a few miles to the anchorage at the north end of Manjack Cay, where we would relax with a potluck dinner on the flybridge of Mother Ocean and maybe do some wandering around on the island.

                         The guys enjoying breakfast at Spanish Cay

Like I said, that WAS the plan - until I got online and checked out the weather.  You see, the local weather reports so far on this trip have predicted the wind direction fairly well, but have not even been close on velocity. For example, we were supposed to have winds of 12 knots out of the south last night.  We got the south part - but the velocity was well over 24 knots. That's been pretty much the case the whole trip; just double the predicted wind speed and that would be about right.  Tonight's forecast is for winds at 9-12 knots out of the SE.  Even if those winds are doubled, the anchorage at Manjack is well protected from that direction.  Problem is, the winds are supposed to veer around suddenly to the NE around midnight and increase to 15-20 knots.  The anchorage is wide open to winds from that direction.  Not good.

So, after consulting the crews, the decision was made to simply hang out at beautiful Spanish Cay for another night!  We will still have our potluck dinner on Mother Ocean's flybridge in about 2 1/2 hours and I am very much looking forward to that as Joe and Mark went spearfishing today and brought back three VERY nice Hog Snappers. One of the most delicious fish in the sea, I am hoping Mark and Cathy bring us a few grilled hogfish bites!

                         Mark & Joe head out to do some fish huntin'...

                                  ...and bring back the rewards.

So today was kind of a lay day.  Some folks did boat chore while others napped.  Some hiked around the island while others did laundry.  Dennis, Jan and I took advantage of the morning's benevolent weather and headed out in Mother Ocean's dinghy to explore the island a bit.  We were out for an hour or so when we noticed a very dark thunderstorm fast approaching, so we high-tailed it back to the marina!

                                 Jan and Dennis sightseeing at Spanish

So I am sitting here at the Spanish Cay bar, enjoying a cold Kalik Light and typing up this blog entry.  Tomorrow, we will all head south a bit farther to our next adventure at Green Turtle Cay.  We may even venture down to No-Name Cay to feed the swimming pigs.  Stand by.  We're really getting down into the Abacos now!

                                 Your favorite blog scribe hard at work