Villa for Sale

The front has passed, and the wind has moderated, and our anchor did indeed drag after the front brought an abrupt wind shift. Fortunately, I was on deck already, so we (Dean) were able to reset the anchor and let out a lot of chain without any harm done. Regardless, we both had a sleepless night worrying about every litle noise we heard. We have pretty much decided that, after this, we will swap our bruce, which has a large surface area, with the CQR, which has sharp edges and had always done well in New England, but has failed us a few times since we hit Florida, and make the bruce our primary for the Bahamas. Yes, Ian, you told us so!

But on to the more fun stuff. We finally went ashore on Royal Island today to take a look at the ruins of a plantation that was built there in the 1930s. It was pretty eerie, as the island had taken over again. We could still see the walls and beautiful tile floors in the buildings, but the windows and roofs were gone.

Dean, who was already rather creeped out by the thick woods and was nervous about trespassing on this unoccupied island, found the skins from a couple of snakes who had used the roof beams of one old building to help with their molting.

That was the end of exploring the ruins. We decided to follow the old, partially paved path to the northern side of the island, which has a little beach (filled with trash washed up on shore and also left by careless people) and the remains of an old concrete dock. The water on the north side is shallow for quite a distance out, and we could see huge breakers on the horizon where the ocean piles up on shallow reefs. This is where I thought I might snorkel, but it is still a bit too breezy and cold for that.

Dean found a beautiful conch shell, about the size of a coconut, washed up on shore, intact but with no conch still in residence. I took it back to the boat as a souvenir. The outside of the shell is tan and white with complicated whorls and spires along the top. The inside is shiny and smooth and goes from cream to bright pink as it curves in on itself.

Tomorrow we will head south to Eleuthera, and the wind looks promising for a great day of sailing, and some fishing, with luck.

------------------------------
Sent via PocketMail
Email Anywhere
www.pocketmail.com