We have been in George Town, Exuma, for a week now, with strong easterlies blowing to make sailing on the east too uncom- fortable. It's been a good stay, with a big regatta in town, but a bit too much hoopla for our tastes. We've been able to provision at the markets here, water up at the town dock, and are ready to go to Long Island. Stocking Island was a beautiful place to hike up and see the other side in Exuma Sound.


Here is a photo of one of the sailboat races in the regatta that sailed very close to us at anchor; impressive Bahamian sailboats with large sail areas. The crew would hike out on long boards to balance the boats.

We spent three nights at a marina at the northern tip of Exuma Island called Emerald Bay. It's under construction right now, and they have dirt-cheap rates until will be done. Right next door is the plush Four Seasons; you can see how they are marketing all of this at http://www.emeraldbayresort.com/ . It worked out to be a day and a half of working on our anchor locker (we've got a new and distressing leak when we bash into head winds), tearing apart everything in the bow of the boat, and a day of lolling about under an umbrella at a beautiful bay, swimming, and then dipping in the hot tub and steam room. All for 75 cents a foot for dockage.

From there, we sailed down Exuma Sound to George Town, which is the destination for many cruisers in the Bahamas. Up to 400 boats anchor here for the entire winter. Now, at the tail end of the season, there are only 140 boats. It's a good place to hole up and wait for weather for the next crossing over to Long Island. There's a fairly well-stocked grocery store, where we'll load up on fresh food, free water, a cruiser-run library and book swap, and many interesting people to talk to. It looks like we will be leaving here on Friday or Saturday if the strong east winds we've been experiencing for a few days will abate by then. We've also run into a few other late arriving boats who are going south and east also, so we know we'll keep seeing them as we work our way south and east. We hope to be in the Turks and Caicos and the Dominican Republic after that in a couple of weeks.

We have been sailing across the Grand Bahamas Bank, to the tip of the Berry Islands, past Nassau, and down the Exumas chain of islands. It has been a mix of absolutely beautiful weather and windy cold fronts; we saw this sunset anchored between Whale Cay and Little Whale Cay, where the next day we weathered a cold front and winds of 30-35 knots.
You can see our new American flag which is now flying on our stern rail, as we were sailing down the Exumas. We have had some great sailing, with a broad reach down to Great Exuma, as well as days of motoring the whole way, or bashing our way into head winds.

Here is Allan's Cay group of islands, where the iguanas are the only inhabitants on the tiny Leaf Cay in the group. We swam ashore to look at the iguanas and spent a lovely night in this anchorage.

We weathered another, stronger cold front anchored behind Bell Island in the Exumas. Next to us was a boat from Minnesota (a couple from Apple Valley, now living in Punta Gorda, FL), and another boat from Calgary, Canada. Winds of 40 knots blew over the hill and boats in other anchorages dragged, but ours held all night.

Here you see Larry keeping a watch out for shallow water from the mast - our mast steps have come in handy for this. Navigation is a challenge; no handy markers like the Intracoastal Waterway in the U.S. exist here. It's all up to studying your charts carefully, knowing your position, and a careful watch. You can also see our Bahamas courtesy flag flying on our starboard flag halyard in this photo.

We finally made it to the Bahamas! We are now in Bimini, one of the western- most islands in the Bahamas. We had to motor the whole trip over from Miami, as the wind was 10 knots on the nose. It was a long trip, almost 12 hours with our trusty little Yanmar engine, but we made it and anchored close to Bimini. We came in here on Thursday morning and have now been waiting for a good weather window to cross the Bahama Banks to the Berry Islands. We expect to leave Sunday morning at dawn, since the voyage will take two full days.

Bimini has a quaint little town, Alice Town, that has been fun to explore in the meantime. We cleared customs and immigration and are now flying a Bahamas flag on our starboard flag halyard, and our new US flag on the stern rail. It really dresses up the boat to be flying flags. We looking forward to dropping our anchor in this crystal clear turquoise water and being able to jump in and swim around.