Great Sale Cay

It was another outstanding visit at Man-O-War Cay. Jay invited us for a tasty curried conch dinner. Jan's recipe was fabulous. Now I wish I had conch! We were all set to stay another week at MOW, making plans with Barb and Barry and the church - then we got a weather window. That turned yesterday into a crash preparation day. The big time consumers were laundry and cleaning the bottom. I narrowed it down to one load of laundry - it is always nice to depart with a good inventory of clean underwear. It took us two hours of hard work in the water cleaning the bottom of Hold Fast. She had a carpet of grass and we want all the speed we can get! We completed the bulk of our voyage preparations, cleaned up and made time for a ginger beer with Barb, Barry and Jay. The rest of our preparations were postponed until our sail on the banks.

Our weather window is small. So small that we made today a long 'day' trip - 79 miles. The winds were too light for Hold Fast on the downwind, so we had to motor assist until later in the day. Not much RPM as we had all sails up full. We had about a dozen dolphins cross our path and they could not resist a little play on our bow wake. It is truly a pleasure to begin a voyage in their company! On our longest leg, about 19 miles, we ran wing and wing and wing. Mizzen on one side, main on another and jib poled out on the same side as the mizzen. We averaged over six knots for the almost 13 hours of moving. We dropped anchored maybe 20 minutes before sundown. A good day!

Preparations while underway on the banks included cooking pasta meals for reheat on the journey, using up all our fresh fruits and veggies - including our last coconut - baking oatmeal raisin coconut cookies, firing up the U.S. phone service, setting up the lee cloth, getting documents in order for clearing into the U.S., and making sure the spinnaker is ready at hand.

It is hard to believe that five months have passed since we came over with Barb and Barry. I told Myron that, to steal a line from the movie 'Captain Ron,' we had just enough parmesan cheese for our time in the Bahamas, and our time must be up because we are almost out of parmesan! We will miss our friends here, the ministries, and the beautiful scenery, but there are positive aspects about any place we drop anchor. For example, I am indeed looking forward to a U.S. supermarket!

Love to all,
Dena

Posted via Ham Radio.
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