Moving on down the island chain…

We’ve had a couple of windy days, did some kiting, and decided to check in on our friends Connie and Crock on a nearby island. So great to see them again and their cute little beach cottage.

The weather was still keeping us around Staniel Cay, so we decided to make a side trip up to Little Halls Pond with our friends Barb and Alec on their beautiful new power cat. They had guests on board and we decided to join them.

Hall’s Pond is one of our favorite anchorages. A few posts ago we wrote about Bell Island. That is just on the other side of Little Hall’s Pond. This anchorage is so beautiful, but a little tricky making the way in.

The Island on the right used to be Johnny Depp’s Island.. But we heard he has sold it. These islands are private, so we are respectful and find other places to go ashore.

It is very shallow in spots, so best to arrive around mid to high tide. This is one of the places where you can really see all of the different colors of blue.

Besides the amazing color, the more time we spend on it, the more we get to know the depths which helps us to know when too shallow to try. The darker the color, the deeper it is. The draft of our boat is 4′, so we get a little nervous when we see our depth gage reading under 5′. Much easier to just go at high tide, but that doesn’t always work out with the time you want to go.

Just across the bay from us is Osprey Cay. This is one of our favorite kite spots. Most of the island is a sand bar, so we need to time kiting for mid tide. It was such a beautiful evening, Oasis, us and another boat nearby decided to have happy hour out on the island.

We had a very fun day kiting the next day. Broke out the GoPro for this shot.

We said goodbye to Alec and Barb, and stayed another 2 nights at this fabulous spot.

The weather was starting to look promising to move south a little. Our plan was to move down towards Farmer Cay, and spend a few days enjoying the great snorkeling and out island feel. It looked like another blow was coming in a few days, so that would be a great place to hang.

We thought you might want to see what a chart of the areas we are cruising looks like. The photo on left is where we anchored in Little Halls Pond, (star) and where we kited. The one on the right is an overview of where we were heading when we left Halls Pond. The purple lines are the rhumb lines which are the charted course to travel to the different waypoints.. We were headed to Big Farmers. (bottom right). The chart also shows the depths in meters.

We had about 30 nautical miles (nautical miles are used to measure distance on the ocean and are a little longer than statute miles). It was a nicer day than we expected with very smooth conditions. So nice, we decided to give the ocean a try… Once we got out there, we realized the original forecast was correct and a bit too rough for our liking. No worries, we just popped back inside through another cut and continued on south.

But as we were getting closer to Farmers Cay, the wind really died down and at the last minute before anchoring, we decided to “take a look” and see ocean state again.. This time, it looked doable, and since the weather has been so bad, we thought we might take this chance to get down to Georgetown since we have a guest coming and want to make sure we don’t have to go in unfavorable conditions.

The wind stayed under control and we had a beautiful motor down to Georgetown. ( about 35nm ) Since the weather had been so unpredictable , we ended up with a few sailboats and a few motor vessels taking advantage of the great conditions.

As I said before…. things have changed a bit since 2015… We arrived in Elizabeth Harbor, Georgetown and joined over 350 other cruisers. We have never seen this many boats in the harbor. It’s definitely a different vibe, but beautiful and the beaches are amazing. Lots to do or nothing to do.. That’s what we enjoy.

We anchored in our favorite anchorage ” Monument”, named for its landmark statue , 200ft above sea level and the highest point on the island. This marker had been used for many years for navigation and also signaled that the island once had salt available.

Feels good to be back… Looking forward to exploring again. Thanks for keeping up with us. We have had a couple requests about the boat, so I will have another small blog with that information coming soon.