Good morning

I was up before the sunrise this morning after a good 8 hours of sleep which was really nice . When you are on the water early to bed is normal, weird how the salty air can make you tired when really you haven't done much all day.

The best part of waking up early is the gorgeous sunrise, with clouds in the sky it makes for a really pretty site. I will attempt to describe how peaceful it is here, the sounds of the waves gently rolling against the boat, the roosters waking up on the near by Island and the flocks of sea birds flying by are some of the highlights of my morning. I am so grateful / thankful for this memory.

The plan for this morning is to take our dingy into the Marina here at Great Harbour Cay and walk around do a bit of exploring. Later this morning we are going to make our way to Little Harbour Cay it has a wonderful protected anchorage spot. If we get lucky and there is room for us we will stay there for a few nights and use our dingy to explore the area. The wind is barely blowing this morning the weather gods on Windfinder said it should be 14kts but that is not the case which is a great thing :-)

We had a very successful 1st dingy ride, the motor which we had recently repaired started quickly and hummed along nicely . The entrance cut to the marina bay is very small but it opens up inside to larger bay and twists around into the marina, this is a very protected gem a perfect hurricane hole if ever anyone needed that. The marina has 60 slips and can accommodate up to 80ft yachts, there are couple of 75 footers but mostly smaller and older ones. This area is very well known for fishing so there were several fishing style boats. I can see that many years ago this was a very nice spot but it is now pretty beat up and run down, developed originally in the 1960's many of the great actors used to frequent this place. We wandered the docks and made our way to the marina office where we were pleasantly surprised they had a few cancellations so we booked our selves in for a few days. Before making our way back to the boat one of the resident boaters told us about a mini workout they were holding in the gazebo so I decided to join the group, I had sandals on and no towel but what the heck. He and his wife have designed a boaters workout which they are marketing and instruct it's a body weight 1/2 boot camp style workout, designed for all levels ...push ups, squats etc. It was easy but the best part was the kindness and general sense of community you got with this group it was really nice to be apart of.

Back to our boat and we thought we might take her out for a bit of cruise before tucking into the marina as we started towards the open water it was really windy so the decision was to head back in and explore the Island. Docking was a dream, Bryan is amazing at navigating small areas with our baby. Several of our neighbor's came out to help us so for the 1st mate it was so nice. The people here in this marina and all over the island are amazingly friendly we have never experienced this before, everyone says hi and chats to you locals and also the boaters it's a real friendly place.

Once we had all the lines sorted out, we decided to take a couple of cruiser bikes out and explore the Island. We put our bathing suits on in hopes of swimming at one of the beaches . Great Harbour Cay is approximately 7 miles long and 2.5 miles across at its widest points. We were given directions on our way out by 2 of the local boaters everyone is full of information on the best spots, again we are blown away by the friendly atmosphere here. It was a great ride these cruiser type bikes are really fun but I have to say much more difficult with no gears, this little island had some hills which you don't often see in the Bahama's so we were standing and really working hard in a few spots which felt good. It was a cooler day so no swimming sadly but we got a real feel for the Island. Stopped in a the Beach Club Bar for a beverage it is nice and located right on the beach they were hosting a fish fry at 6:30 so we made a plan to come back for that. 
 The little town is small with a few stores, couple of churches and an all age school. We were passing the school as the children were just finishing they were all dressed in their red uniforms very formal and not very many of them it was the smallest school I've ever seen . All of the locals were friendly and said hi as you passed them.

The fish fry was fun, we hitched a ride from the local fishing guide who we found at the marina office he was heading that way and said hop on in. There were several marina guests there already and we were assured we could get a ride back from someone. Enjoyed some good conversations and the fish was tasty you were given a choice of 4 fish and it came with corn on the cob, a dinner roll and fry's, the fish was served whole with the head on and it was fried...very tasty! We didn't stay too long as it was really windy and cold, we hitched a ride back in the back of some guys pick up truck us and 4 others in the back a few in the front it was really fun.

The evening crib continues Skipper 1 game and 1st Mate 1...then some rummy where I was beat down nicely...not much card luck these days but it was fun :-)