Falling for Eleuthera and the out islands

The entrance to Hatchet Bay - skinny isn't it??

We left Spanish Wells Monday in a slight breeze - too slight for a long sail, but enough to satisfy for now. We managed to negotiate Current Cut - so named because the cut can have currents running 10 knots or more. But it provides, at slack water, a great shortcut into the banks of Eleuthera island.

The trick here though, is to try to figure out just when slack water is. There are no current tables and the tide tables, well they're a bit more flexible, let's say, in the out islands. The tides here could be anywhere from half an hour to an hour or two off of the official Nassau tide tables and our Garmin's tide tables were hard to read as well. We took a stab at it, and guessed fairly correctly that the current would be somewhat slack. We made our way to Hatchet Bay and took the spooky narrow entrance into a fabulously protected anchorage. We went in for happy hour and met some interesting cruisers and had a wonderfully quiet night.

Today we motored in a dead calm for about six hours and made it to Rock Sound, Eleuthera. All throughout our trip, two things have struck as surprising: lack of cruisers and who we did meet, many, at least half are Canadian. So we came into Rock Sound, there are only six sailboats in the harbour and two of us are Canadian, one British, two American and one Bahamian. Of course, still no cruising kids in sight. That was not a surprise, unfortunately.

We have heard from three cruising families we have met and know they are either in Georgetown or are headed that way and we know we'll see them soon.

This is a neat spot and we'll wait out another front tomorrow before perhaps making our way across the Exuma Sound to the Cays - can't wait, it sounds fantastic.

The Atlantic beach of Spanish Wells

We're surprised at the sheer beauty and crystal waters though of Eleuthera and Spanish Wells. We hope to come back.