Time to say goodbye to the Island of Eleuthera and my favourite Bahamian anchorage, so far, Egg Island.
There has been little or no wind for the last few days, but we will have to ‘bite the bullet’ and waste some fuel to continue North.
Our plans are to head up the outer Abacos on our way to the United States.
Little Harbour looked like a good place to head to next but it has a few problems. First, the harbour is full of mooring balls at $20/night, and we would need high tide to get in or out. But there is an anchorage just outside we decided to aim for instead.
The second problem is the cruising guide insists you need good light to enter the cut to get into the protected waters here. At just over 50nm, and little wind, we might not make it until late evening, if we left early morning.
So we headed off just before sunset to motor sail through the night to get to the Abacos in the morning.
With our route through the reef well mapped we headed out with the sun set.
As we headed out, we just could not believe how flat and benign the sea was.
The humans had a lot of boating traffic to dodge in the night, I went to sleep. This was probably the most traffic they have had to deal with in the Caribbean. But, by the morning light, they were well out the ‘busy lane’ and the Island of Great Abaco was in sight.
The cut at Little Harbour was very large and could have been easily navigated in any light with modern chart plotters, despite what the guide-book insisted.
We had a look at the anchorage outside Little Harbour, but a Westerly swell was coming right through the cut and, at a depth we could anchor in, we would be left exposed and rolling about. So we sailed a little further north to the protected anchorage off Lynyard Cay.
At least there is a nice beach here.
I hear the snorkelling off the point, in the cut, is very good. But the humans opted for a siesta instead.
Wow, we are in the Abacos.
We now have an incredible number of islands and cays to explore on the Atlantic side and ports to explore on the main island of Great Abico side in the protected Sea of Abaco that lies between them.
Maybe it will take us longer then we think to get to the States!
