December 4, 2009.

The weather gods smiled upon us. On Thursday the winds were supposed to moderate to 15 knots outta the south and to dwindle even further as the afternoon wore on.

We discussed our options with the Solitaires and came up with a reasonable plan. If the wind and seas were indeed down when morning came we would sail off to Eleuthera in the east. If it was still uncomfortable in the morning we would leave at noon and motor the 10 miles straight into the afternoons dying wind and head into either Devils/ Hoffman or Adler Cays.

Imagine our surprise when morning came and Solitaire said they were having an issue with their batteries and decided to motor straight into the wind for the 50 mile trip to Nassau. Planning on a sailboat is pretty hard to do and when trying to formulate a plan for 2 or more…..lets just say herding cats would be easier.

There was no way we were going to motor into the wind and seas all the way to Nassau. Not to mention the fact that Nassau pretty much sucks. We know they weren’t going because they wanted to, but it came as such a shock we just couldn’t bring ourselves to head south with them. The wind was from the south at 15 so we bade adieu to Solitaire and sailed east for Royal Island, Eleuthera.

It was a long splendid day of sailing. Maybe, a perfect day. We were reaching along with Rover driving while Christy and I took turns sunning ourselves on the aft deck. It was glorious. We trailed several different lures during the day in an effort to catch a Mahi-Mahi which roam these deep waters. We did have 2 strikes during the day which only resulted in our lures getting beat up a bit. We did hear a boat named Osprey land a 38 pound Mahi just a few miles ahead of us. So maybe the day could have been better, but not much.

We pulled into the anchorage at Royal Island just as darkness fell. We anchored among a half dozen other boats that were already lying at anchor in the very protected harbor.