Norman and Shroud Cay

Norman's Cay was not our favorite spot. We had to anchor quite a ways out from the cay and it was a long haul to the beach for Moose's run. There is a Beach Club there and some neighbor boats went in for drinks the day before we arrived. They said it was nice but expensive. We did meet these fellow cruisers Debbie, single handing an Island Packet 29, Illusions, after her husband died in Granada 5 years ago and Ray and Gary from Australia on a Vagabond 42 named Fellowship. They are good friends who met each other months back in Oriental, NC.

We left Norman's after one day and sailed down to Shroud Cay which is in the Exuma Park a protected area where fishing of any kind is not allowed. This is a beautiful area with large sandy beaches and creeks to explore. There is only one creek that the park allows motor driven vessels to run and it winds its way across the cay to the Atlantic or east side. There you can climb a pathway to the top of a hill with awesome views. The cays look to be volcanic rock with vegetation that can survive with little fresh water.

We anchored near Illusions and Fellowship and shared cocktail hour with them. Gary's outboard had died on their way back from the creek and we towed them quite a distance back to their boat.

Moose is loving the beaches and has a good run twice a day. He especially loves company and going to visit other cruisers.

We have to radio our next stop in the park to reserve a mooring ball as their are no anchorage areas and our radio is not reaching the park headquarters so fortunately Debbie's can and has relayed our request. If there are no openings, you must wait until the following morning to check in and see if there is space. On Wed. we got a relayed message that there was room for us at Wardwrick Wells on Thursday so we left and had a good sail in 18-22 knt winds.

We are learning things each day that we are out. John is perfecting the process of raising the mainsail so we able to do it more quickly. We now know that we require our batteries to be at a pretty high level in order for our GPS to work so we now plan for that if we are leaving early before the solar panels can supply enough energy.

It looks like we will stay here on our mooring until Sat morning and if the weather holds make our way to Staniel Cay which is the first place where we can find diesel, gas and water to fill our tanks.

We are settling into island time. John commented how strange it was not to know any of the football scores. We are without the constant communication we were accustomed to. We may be able to get on wifi at Wardrick Wells however they do not allow Skype or any social networks to be used as they don't have the bandwidth to support it. We will try to get email out later today.

Here it is. We are not sure when we will next get wifi. We have this connection through today. Just found out it may take 8 weeks to get our mail once it is forwarded. Not sure how we will handle that as there is some mail we must get by end of Feb. We have no phone connection here. May get it again in Staniel Cay. Life in paradise can be complicated. Hope you are all well and enjoying winter.