The palm tree almost jumps ship.

June 22 9:00 AM 671 hours
We awake to a very grey morning, no sun. This is not good as our next travel is going to take us over some of the most dangerous cruising area that we will encounter on this trip. The Exuma Bank. This bank is another very shallow area with depths around 10 feet or so. But worse, it is loaded with very dangerous coral heads that lie just below the surface ready to tear running gear and fiberglass from the bottom of a heedless boat. On a bright sunny day it is easy to spot the black coral heads against the aqua water but today without sun, the contrast between the water and them makes them very difficult to spot. The best we can see is a few hundred feet in front of the boat and at 22 knots we have to watch very carefully so that we can effect a course change to avoid them. Bob is at the helm and Gary S. and I keep a watchful eye out barking directions to Bob as soon as we spot one. Three very long hours of this nerve wracking pace and we finally cleared the minefield.
We hadn’t fueled yesterday, so our next stop was Staniel Cay where we would have lunch at this rather infamous little restaurant that supposedly Jimmy Buffet was inspired by when he wrote his legendary Cheeseburger in Paradise song. Pulling into the docks, Gary S. was surprised to see hardly any boats at the docks. The wind was blowing us at them pretty strong and was going to make docking difficult. Hailing the dockmaster we announced our intentions to tie up, take on fuel and have a bite to eat. The dockmaster said sure if you want to try it, she suggested we go to the inside so the wind and waves would blow us off the dock. I don’t know why everywhere we go we can’t seem to get dock tenders to cleat a line so we can work the engines against it to pull the boat into position. Needless to say that didn’t happen here either and it became a very difficult proposition to dock the boat, but we made it. Bob fueled the boat and Gary S. and I went up to order lunch. The cheeseburger on Bahamian bread was pretty good as was the Kalik beer, but then anything tastes good when you’re out on the water all day. We finished our lunches, tried to buy some desperately needed ice but nothing doing they were completely out. This is our third day without ice. We have a few ice trays in the freezer but that’s about it. Anyway, we left there and headed down to Clarence Town on Long Island, Bahamas. It was a nice ride on a comfortable sea. It was late when we arrived in port and finding our route was a little challenging to get in without hitting the coral heads but we made it and docked on the T-head. At Gary S’s request I made my American Chop Suey for dinner. Gary S says this stuff is GREAT ! My mom lifted the basic recipe from Murphy’s Diner in Pascoag R.I. many years ago. I added a little zing to it and now have my own recipe. More grog and bed.