Royal Island

We got an early 7am start this morning to cut westward across the top of the Bight of Eleuthera. We were on a schedule because we had to go through a channel called Current Cut that, as the name would imply, has a strong current running through it. You want to go through the cut when the tide is flowing with you rather than trying to fight against it. So our choice was to either leave early and get to the cut before 9:30am, or sit around and wait to go through the cut with the next ebb tide at 3:30 pm. We are glad we took the early option. Our destination was Royal Island, which is our last stop in this area before we make the crossing to the Abacos. There is a nice lagoon to anchor in here, and it seems a lot of other boats had the same idea to stopover here while waiting to go to Abaco. When we arrived there were 14 boats already here in the anchorage. At the end of the day 10 more showed up. There is plenty of room in the lagoon, but it was good that we got here early and didn't have to worry about finding a spot to anchor.

We plan to sit tight here and wait for a nice weather window to make the 55 mile crossing to the Abacos. Kevin listened to the weather on the SSB radio today. There's a guy called Chris Parker and he is a professional weather router, meaning that he analyzes the weather and gives vessels the go/no-go to move from point A to point B. He covers the entire Carribean and gets on the radio, gives the weather, and then "sponsoring vessels" can radio him with their position and where they're trying to go and he'll tell them what to expect weather-wise. It's a couple hundred bucks to become a sponsoring vessel, and since our Bahamas cruise is nearly over we will wait til next year to sign up. But for now we just listen in, and there always seems to be a sponsoring vessel near us who is headed in our same direction anyway. This morning someone radioed from Spanish Wells (the next island over) and they are headed to Abacos. Chris told them to wait until Saturday when the winds will be favorable to sail downwind the whole way. So we'll hang out here until then.

Where we are:
Lat: N 25 30.951'
Long: W 76 50.533'