Friday, February 14, 2014 West End to Carter Cay

Today we had a wonderful day. After hunkering down to ride out a 35-40 knot blow in the marina, we were ready to be out at sea again. We made an early start and were away at sun up. Our plan was to make it to Great Sale Cay, which is the half-way point across the Bahama Banks. There was no wind, and the ocean was like glass– ok, not ideal for sailing, but it made for a super-smooth ride. We motored at about 6 to 6.5 knots, and made it to Great Sale by 2:15. Knowing that tomorrow would be a long day, we elected to continue on to shorten our day.

We made it to Carter Cay. The scenery approaching was somewhat surreal. We saw several Cays that were no more than sand bars as is typical in the Bahamas, but then came across massive block-like limestone outcrops which rose 3 to 3 stories out of the ocean.  Because of the weather conditions and the mirage effect of the flat calm water, these sometimes presented themselves as if they were sitting above the ocean surface on stilts. This was very weird and almost “surreal”.

We saw little wildlife - several flying fish and an occasional fish, but Patrick did catch dinner– we think it may have been an Amberjack, but decided it was simply “dinner fish”. We had this with 3 lobsters we bought from a local diver at our last stop. He brought them to the boat (alive) and cleaned them for us.

So we are presently anchored in Carter Cay. We had a great dinner. Salty had a swim when he went on-shore. We are the only people here - it is uninhabited. We feel like we have our own planet tonight! The moon rose as the sun set - absolutely awesome to see!

Tomorrow we will head for Green Turtle Cay

The Sea of Abaco

I am having difficulties uploading photos due to a slow connection, but will try to upload more later.

Below are some pictures from the West End before we left for Carter Cay.