The winds have continued to be strong in the 20-30k range from the E/SE which has made for beautiful sailing with very little motoring which is the way we love to do things.
The Byte of Acklins live up to their reputation in our Explorer chart books of being remote and not a particularly favorable cruising ground because
of the low water depth. Yesterday we had to stop enroute to Datum Bay and drop anchor for several hours. The water depth 6.2 ft and at many times we were
bumping along instead of sailing along. We need 5 ft. of water in order to stay afloat; so we had a nice lunch and a nap and waited till the tide started
to rise. The boat has been getting a good fresh water bath this week with the frequent rain storms which are mostly in the evening which is fine with us.
The days however have also been a bit overcast which causes concern for us because we like to use our solar instead of our generator or diesel engine to recharge with.
Sometimes our evening are not as peaceful as we would like with the generator providing our background "music" if you can call it that. Fortunately we have headphone for our ipod and I have my keyboard with headphones so we do have options.
The towns here are very small. The grocery store; if there is one on the island consists of about 150 items at most and to our standards looks like a house in disrepair.
However we make a point of visiting the store as the store owners are VERY FRIENDLY and know alot about the islands. We are also finding that it is a VERY SMALL World in the Acklins as many of the islanders seems to be related. The Acklins certainly maintains their reputation for being extremely friendly people. Hitchhiking here is no problem in fact you don't even have to put out your thumb; they stop and ask if you want a ride. Ed and Pete enjoyed a ride in the back of a pickup on Wednesday in Spring Point which is the town near Camel Point in Delectable Bay where we anchored. Dee and I rode in the cab and had a very interesting chat with Ferguson(45 yrs) about the resort he has been trying to build for the past 5 years alone, harvesting cascarilla tree and exporting to Europe for the making of root beer, perfume, cigarettes and to sweeten foods. We were thrilled to visit the local store and talk with some of the children who all wear uniforms to school and say "Yes Sir, Yes Ma'am", they are very polite. I like to question the children as to their georgraphy knowledge of the location of Oregon; it is surpising but very few know where it is but they usually know about California.
We spent a nice night in Datum Bay before heading north to French Wells at the southern end of Crooked Island. The wind angle was perfect such that with 15-20 knots of wind we averaged 7K with highs of 8.2K. Whooeee! As we passed Albert Town on Long Cay the fishing reel made that sound as a fish began stripping line. After about 15 minutes we had a 44" MahiMahi along side. It was a terrific iridescent blue color which changed when we brought it on deck. We've enjoyed several meals already, including one with Pete and Dee, the rest is in the freezer.
We made such good time that we anchored outside of the French Wells cut waiting for the tide. Pete and Dee made it in with no problem however we went a little off and wound up on the sandbar which required us to take down the dinghy to help push us to deeper water. Finally, we were free, went through to the anchorage which had high current and poor holding so we went back out and anchored in sand offshore. In sand we trust our anchors no matter the type they all hold.
Today we dinghied up Turtle Bay Sound following the stakes to a little dock where we decided to not walk the 2 miles to the settlement and not continue all the way into Turtle Bay because the tide was starting to turn and parts of the "trail" are only a couple feet deep which not being from around these here parts concerned us. We saw mangroves, tropical birds and had a beautiful ride. We then stopped at the beach and walked for about an hour before heading home for an early dinner of MahiMahi. Later we went back to the beach for a little rock etching to put our names with others at the rock pile. We also followed a cairn trail and found a well. We didn't see pollywogs because it was getting dark but they are a sign of good water. We watched the sunset on the beach and that was it for 3-9-2009.
The agenda for tomorrow is some snorkeling followed by moving the boat about 8 miles north to Landrail Point on Crooked Islands northwest shore.
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