January 11 2014

We slipped our mooring in Boot Key Harbor late morning with the low tide so we could make it under the bridge and then we dropped the hook outside the harbor of Marathon till about 4pm and then we sailed off towards Cay Sal. The sail was exhilarating, we had the main out and the jenny flying. The seas were a little steep, but our little ship took them in stride. About 2 hours later we were in the Gulf Stream moving along. We did see a lot of turtles and it made me think of the movie "Finding Nimo" with the turtles in the Australian current (awesome dude)! A pod of dolphins came and played in the bow wake for a time and Pierre and I stood on the back deck and watched their antics, jumping out of water and scooting along beside us, these were a different kind of dolphin, they are brown with white spots along both sides. The air was so clear and the sky cloudless that I got to see the green flash again as the sun dipped down behind the horizon!

I was hoping we would not see any ships but there were a ton of them, coming and going, container ships, passenger ships, fishing vessels, you name it, they were sailing along. The stars were so so many, and later in the evening the wind died down, the seas settled and the ocean was nothing more than dark inky water moving along the sides of the boat, it felt as if we were flying along on a magic carpet! It was so calm you could see the reflection of the stars on the water.

We made really good time, so we slowed down, we did not want to enter unfamiliar waters in the dark. Soon the sky began to lighten up ever so slowly and after a while we could make out Cay Sal Bank.

We motored along around Muertos and Double Headed Shot Cays and dropped the hook in front of Elbow Cay in 25ft of the clearest, cleanest water I have seen so far, you can see the bottom in 30ft of water!

After we set the hook and I took a couple of bearings, and Yawn, we went to bed!

I woke up about 11am and sat in the sun on the deck and watched things going on around me, there are a lot of starfish, I mean some big ones, so I snapped a couple of pictures of the ones around the boat, the water is so clear! Then I spent most of the day stowing away the things that find their way out when we are sailing and Pierre filled our water tanks by making us water. Later the wind started to pick up as the front made it way down to us and that made putting the dink in the water not possible, the waves sat up and we are rockin and rollin!  Maybe tomorrow we can go ashore on one of the Islands and do some exploring!