Moving south..just a little bit!

The big blow finally left the area and we were able to leave Cambridge Cay after 6 days. It was a great spot to rest and wait out the windy days. We did see wind in excess of 25 knots (about 46 km/hr) with some pretty big gusts but we were very secure on the mooring ball. Our biggest challenge was the noise coming from our new wind generator! It made some deep vibrating sounds when the wind was really strong (which was always in the middle of the night!!). Mark sent an email to the manufacturer and it turns out that the noise we were hearing was the brakes (it was trying to slow itself down). For the next big blow, we will engage the brake ahead of time and avoid the sleepless nights. The only positive thing is that we made lots of electricity and our batteries were very well charged.

Today we left Cambridge Cay at high tide (around 9am) and made the 11nm trip down to Staniel Cay. This is the way to cruise – get going slowly and only move for about 2 hours. We were anchored right beside Jane and Steve on Daydreams ll by 11 am. We went ashore and had lunch at Staniel Cay Yacht Club and then did a little bit of grocery shopping. Staniel Cay is a very popular tourist spot in the Exumas. There are several small resorts and cabins and there are many boat excursions that come and go. The pig beach is located right here and that is a popular spot of tourists (not so popular with boaters because the tour powerboats make very big wakes and are not super courteous of the anchored boats).

Tomorrow morning we’ll head over to the marina and fill up our one empty water tank. This is our first sailing season without a water maker so we’re being careful with our water. We managed to get 18 days from our 1 tank (it’s a 100 gallon tank) and we have another just like it, so we can go a month before we would be out of water. After that, we’ll travel slightly further south to Bitter Guana Cay and check it out. We are very slowly making our way down to George Town.