Beautiful ride north

Today we began the trek back to Florida in earnest.  Leaving out of beautiful Orchid Bay Marina at 7AM, we started our 10-hour cruise back to our anchorage at Great Sale Cay.

We went around the much-feared Whale Cay passage with zero drama. There were easy five-foot rollers coming in from seaward, but our hardy Great Harbours barely felt them.  We passed No Name Cay - site of our day with the swimming pigs, Green Turtle Cay, and other points north as we finally passed by our official Bahamian point of entry at Spanish Cay around eleven o'clock.

The initially blustery day evolved into a perfect, sunny, 5-knot-breeze day as we headed into the harbour on the southeast side of Great Sale Cay at a little before 5pm.  Now, there was some talk about continuing west for three more hours and anchoring on the east side of Mangrove Cay, but everyone was really tired and voted to anchor at Great Sale rather than slog on until 8.

Problem is, the anchorage we were holed up in is completely open to southwest and south winds - and we had 5-8-knot southwest winds!  Still, it was completely flat and comfy and the winds were not forecast to increase tonight.  So Joe went swimming off the back of Chutay and others (us) had drinks on the flybridge.  Everyone retired early after over ten hours on the water.  It was a perfect day and evening...