Little Harbour Cay - there and back again

Yesterday another boat came into the anchorage, a Manta 42 called "Escondido". We had seen them at our last anchorage but hadn't had a chance to talk much so last night the four of us went to dinner at Flo's. John and Shelley are from Fort Worth and have great Texas accents. They were super friendly and we are looking forward to meeting up with them again, as they are heading in the same direction we are (Nassau, and eventually to Georgetown in the Exumas) We traded them a loaf of bread for 4 Shiner Bocks (Texas Beer!), I think we got the better end of the deal.

We had planned to head on to Chub Cay this morning, so today around 8:30 we hauled up both anchors (Kevin had to haul up the Fortress by hand, along with 50 ft of chain -- we are going to practice more setting two anchors because we are sure there is an easier way than how we did it.) Escondido was up and out of the anchorage with sails up before we even had our first anchor up. We got outside the anchorage and were seeing winds gusting to 22, with 4-6 foot seas. Up until now we've tried to only sail in 10-15 knots, mostly because I get terrified easily. But today we thought maybe it was time to get experience with stronger winds and started to raise the main. That's when stuff started going wrong. First the halyard (that is the line that hoists the sail) wrapped itself around the shroud (one of the wires that holds up the mast). So with the mainsail half raised we couldn't raise it any more and had to lower it so that Kevin could unfoul the halyard. Okay, try again. The second time we raised the sail, the reef lines (which are used to make the sail smaller in high winds) got all tangled up on two of our GPS antennas, cracking the PVC pipes in half. We were lucky not to lose them overboard, and fortunately it was only the PVC housing that broke, not the cables inside. Plus we think one of the reef lines must have hit our wind generator (works like a windmill to generate power) because now it appears to be unbalanced and is vibrating quite a bit more than normal. Anyway we were unwilling to risk a third try and with broken equipment, we decided to turn around and come back. So our spirits are a little low, but we are going to hang here since hopefully the windspeed will decrease by Saturday. I should mention that 20 knot winds aren't considered bad conditions. Sometimes 20 knots can be a great day sailing, other times 20 knots can be pretty unpleasant. It depends on not only the size of the seas, but how close together they are. Sometimes you don't know until you go out and check it out for yourself. Today we decided that we didn't want to slog through it, but Escondido got out there just fine. So even though the conditions were manageable, we think we did the right thing coming back in.

Where we are:
Lat: N25 34.075
Long: W77 43.308