Our goal was to get around Whale Cay as a boat of our draft has to go this way to travel north in the Abacos. There is a shallow bar blocking passage on the inside. We had to go out Great Guana cut, traverse a channel along Whale Cay and re enter at Whale Cay Cut. Then it was just a short trip past Green Turtle to Manjack or Nunjack Cay where we would anchor.
One tricky part was that we could not leave Marsh Harbour without letting the tide come in a little but we wanted to reach Whale Cay Cut before the tide switched to ebb. We wanted the wind and current with us as we re- entered.
We decided to leave a few hours after low tide. This allowed some morning time for Deb and I to walk to town and do a little shopping. We walked over to the little grocery store and the boutique. We also discovered a new coffee shop in the area. Kathy and Teri, our Cape Eleuthera friends were in the shop. We had a very nice walk
.After lunch, we said goodbye to Jeff and Deb. They helped us off the dock and David backed out. We had hoped our stern would walk to port in reverse but our bow had other ideas and caught the wind. David was able to back out easily and then turn. We had 6 inches under our keel at the most shallow point heading out.
The motor to the cut and the trip past Whale Cay went well. It was a little rolly but there were no large waves and we did not have people passing us in the channel. We entered at Whale Cay Cut without issue, the wind and current with us as we had planned.
We pulled up the sails and had a nice broad reach to Manjack. There were quite a few boats there but we had no problem finding a spot. After we were set, we dinghied and paddle boarded over to a beach near the mangroves. We saw turtles swimming. We paddled around the anchorage a little more and got back to the boat at sunset. So beautiful here.
