Wednesday, February 15:  Sailors need wind. But sometimes there can be too much and it causes the waves to increase, especially if the wind blows down a long fetch of water such as Exuma Sound.

We had a rolly night at anchor at Lighthouse Beach. The wind clocked around from the south and increased overnight. We knew it would but had nowhere else to go.

This morning we set off to cross Exuma Cay. We were hoping to get to Staniel Cay as Jim really wanted to see the swimming pigs on nearby Big Majors Spot. But of course the wind was right out of that direction. The waves were ok but soon the white horses were racing off their tops And wave heights grew to about 1.5m maybe more.  It was at least 15-20 knots all day.  We had our mainsail double-reefed which was a good thing.  At one point the guys saw a school of flying fish but I missed them.

Bashing south became too uncomfortable so we decided to reach northward for Highbourne Cay Marina but they were full.  So we zigzagged our way through the shallows to SW Allan’s Cay.

We are anchored off of a beautiful horseshoe-shaped beach in 4′ of water with two monohulls anchored behind us in deeper water.  Paul and I swam to check our two anchors and made friends with a curious ray. It had a small fish hitchhiking on top of it.  The ray came right up to me, I think looking for a handout as folks sometimes feed them. I will post pics as soon as I can from my underwater cam. They say there are also protected iguanas here so we hope to see them. So good to get out of the strong winds though there is enough breeze in here to keep the bugs down.

Tomorrow the wind is to blow even stronger so we are staying put for another day, then we’ll see.