More Road Trips and Finally a break in the weather.

We wound up spending almost two weeks at Emerald Bay. It took another road trip and a couple of day passes at Sandals to help while away the time. I have to admit it was disappointing that we could not take advantage of the dink at Emerald Bay. The marina faces directly out into Exuma Sound and while center consoles and larger boats can punch through it, and yes our dink can as well, the comfort level required by some folks would have been exceeded so we left the dink parked along side of Freedom.
 And we set out for Sandals. If you were are going to be stuck at Emerald Bay, a day pass at 90 bucks a person might sound expensive, but it is totally worth it. There are a few swimming pools, plenty of lounge chairs around them, towels, lunch, and drinks are all included. The day pass begins at 10AM and that means, Mimosas! And no one cared how many you had so we enjoyed a couple of them poolside. Not too shabby. At lunch time we had several options at our disposal. Pizza, pub fare, a buffet with all of the trimmings and deserts, and yet another open bar. So we ate lunch twice and skipped dinner, had plenty of desert and a night cap. All by 6PM when it was time to leave.

 On our second outing with a a rental car we rode down to Georgetown again and almost took the ferry to Chat and Chill but we realized that once at Chat and Chill we were going to be stuck and unable to walk the beach on Stocking Island. That being the case, we took care of shopping and checked out other establishments while we had the car. We stopped in at Exuma Point, Shoreline, and Catch a Fire so we could decide where to enjoy some time on the next pass. I will say if you attempt to drive to Catch a Fire at night, you might break an axle on the car. So this place while it looked inviting, was off our list because it was going to be an evening instead of an afternoon kind of outing. The funny thing about this outing in the car, was that no matter where we went, and we know we were not followed because we are paranoid NYers, two people kept showing up on the scene. As it turned out they were on a 25th birthday celebration trip from the snowy midwest and finally we all hooked up for a couple of laughs at Sandals during our second day pass when the rain came. You know, making lemonade out of lemons? Great people they are and we enjoyed sitting around killing time while the rain fell. Rumor has it they almost missed their plane the next day. I believe it.
  Moving on, and I am sure they are glad I am, we wound up at Exuma point for the Sunday BBQ. It was terrific. All sorts of good grilled food and plenty of tasty sides. While we were there, a catamaran passed South into the wind and waves. It passed very slowly bouncing violently up and down. It seemed like they were making progress so we watched them disappear into the weather without concern. Later, we went back to Emerald Bay and went out to the point to reflect on the sea conditions versus the predictions. Since both sucked we said yeah, we ain't going anywhere and we were about to go back to Freedom when this catamaran appears at the entrance. Yes, the same one from up North. We watched them slide into the marina rather ungracefully and then met them back at the boat since they tied up behind us. They were four couples and three of them mutinied and demanded to come back in spite of the weather. The captain had  a broken finger and everyone wanted out. Nice vacation? Not. They all rented rooms at Grand Isle and gave up on the cruise after only a couple of days. This was a recurrent theme while we stayed put at Emerald. People came in and cruised out, only to return early. Oh well. We're glad we are retired and can sit weather out.
 Finally our patience was rewarded. We motored out of Emerald Bay and I let the dink out behind Freedom taking a couple of rope burns in the process because the waves pulled the line out of my hands. No big deal, we move North towards Cave Cay where we would get back into the shallow water and relatively calm conditions. We rolled along in the following sea but the auto pilot was able to keep up and we made good progress at about 8 knots.
 But to get on the bank we had to traverse Cave Cay Cut again and on this day, it was acting up.

The above photo of the waves was taken at Cave Cay Cut while the tide was running out and, the seas out of the South were piling into the outflow. It made for a "sporty" ride back onto the bank. I had to throttle Freedom up quite a bit to make headway. This was one of the times we were glad we went with Freedom instead of a low horsepower trawler. Normally at the power setting I used, we run 13 or 14 knots. Not so this day, we could only make 5. But it was all good and in spite of stuffing the anchor a couple of times we wound up back on the bank in calm shallow water. We know the dink (Madonna) was happy to be done with that passage.
 And later that day we found ourselves up at the Staniel Cay yacht Club where we would sit out yet another dose of wind out of the East that was bringing more unsettled weather. The Club was a more appealing place to spend some time because there is less traffic on the island and there are many more possibilities to explore with the dink. Being on the lee side of the cays now, we did not have to deal with Exuma Sound's conditions to get out in the dink. As long as we stayed close to the cays and away from the inlets we could move around quite a bit. We were able to make a passage to Black Point and walk around, visit the pigs on Big Majors, snorkel Thunderball Grotto, and pass through many places in between as the photo on the right illustrates. Some of the scenery is amazing.
 But soon enough the weather laid down again and we had the opportunity for a relatively calm passage on the bank up to Hawksbill Cay.