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.