Tom here yet again to give you an exciting and youthful angle on life in the slow yet intermittently fast lane. We all biked or walked into "town" at West End, but there's not much there after the place was battered by three hurricanes in a row. Lots of abandoned buildings, garbage blowing around, empty conch shells. After we left West End we sort of went headlong into the Bahamas wilderness.

The first place we stopped was a little island called Mangrove Cay. It was a a boring sail through shallow and calm water. Pretty though. Upon arrival we set the anchors along with the rest of our convoy and ate dinner and went to bed. The most exiting thing to happen at Mangrove Cay was Abby (the convoy mascot dog) refusing the beach as a passable latrine. She ended up holding it for nearly 24 hours.

We set sail the next day for Great Sale Cay. A beautiful island that Abby was happy to see. We stayed for a full day and did some fishing. I got a foot long snapper and a very very small barracuda. I also went swimming, trying my hand at spearfishing to no avail.

One of the great things about this area is the radio. Out of the two channels we sometimes get there is always something entertaining to listen to. The terminology is mostly to blame. Instead of "That's what people are saying" you get "That is the word on the lips of the people." And in terms of the weather, instead of "showers" you get "pesky sprinkles." Can you imagine what would happen at home if they started tacking on their opinions of the weather? If sprinkles are pesky, what is two feet of soaking wet slush on the ground?

Moving on. We headed on down the line to Allens Pensacola or "pepsi cola" as we call it, where anchoring was bit of a challange but ultimately succesful after switching from the 45 pound CQR to the 35 pound Delta (for all you anchor jockies out there). This place is by definition a tropical paradise. Great long beaches all the way around, the water is crystal clear and the air temperature is perfect 98.6 which happens to be normal human body temperature. I'll stop talking about it for fear of receiving hate mail.

Paul and I tried spear fishing again with much greater success, landing eight blue striped grunts and one grey snapper. This all worked out for the dinner party we had in our cockpit for nine people, during which the convoy crew took the opportunity to make Paul and Denise (from North Carolina) proper honourary Canadians (which seemed to make their boat go a little faster the next day).

The next day, we all got to pull those white things up on the big sticks and turn the motor off. Our first sail in the Bahamas! All the way to Green Turtle Cay, which has a lovely town, New Plymouth. We arrived first and turned around to sail through the fleet. which was a very good photo op for us and the other three boats. We let the shallower drafts enter the harbour first as the chart showed it to be a very tight fit. We ended up waiting outside the harbour for an hour for the tide. While entering the harbour the depth sounder showed depths as low as 5.8 feet, which is strange because we draw six and we were still moving. So here we are in a lovely little town waiting for weather so we can go on another wild adventure.

PS from SB: Laundry is $4 wash, $3.75 dry. No laundry will be done by me, here. Found a wine bottle with a message in it on the beach at Great Sale. It also contained a very battered US buck. Message was written on Chicago Ritz Carleton notepaper, but the ink had washed off. Note: use indelible ink for bottle messages.
We have a lousy connection here, and we keep losing it when we swing on the mooring, so I'll post a pile of pics some other time.