We left Manjack at dawn and headed north. It was a downwind sail. We were able to put the main out and hold it steady with the boom preventer. We have to get used to it being there, like when we come about, but it works well. There is no crashing about with the wave action on the boat. And it is much safer sailing downwind, especially when there are waves pushing you around.
Our genoa, on the other hand, works well about 30 degrees off the wind but does not do well directly downwind. We tried it by itself, wing on wing on both sides, and with the main and it just flapped around. We thought about trying our spinnaker but the winds were supposed to pick up and we were anxious about pulling it down.
So we sailed with our main and were able to sail about 6 hours. We motored about 4 hours at various points .
We anchored at Great Sale Cay which is an uninhabited island with a rocky shoreline. It was hard to find a place to go ashore but we tied Fat Tuesday to a rock and waded in. We saw a shark swimming in shallow water.
We explored a bit more by dinghy and then headed back to eat and prepare for our crossing to Florida tomorrow.
