Sailing in Bahamas wouldn't be complete for us without a picture of a shadow of the main reflected off the bottom (through clear water.)  Here it is.  AND....if you look really closely, you can see the faint shadow of the headstay!

Actually I can't see the headstay at this point, but I can see a grassy bottom.  Hooray for a beautiful sunny calm day.

    It was, as predicted, a beautiful day today. However, we went from too much wind to next to none. We left Man-O-Way Cay at 9:30 am and headed out into the Sea of Abaco. We raised the main, but not our hopes, in an attempt to sail. After about half an hour of drifting we decided to make our own wind and motorsailed across to Mermaid Reef, which is right outside the bight at Marsh Harbour. We dropped the hook at 11:00 and prepared for our first venture underwater this trip. The gear, provided by the Moorings was really quite good. Masks didn't leak and the flippers were comfortable and efficient. We were close enough to the reef to swim, but opted to take the dinghy closer. Kate is not a fan of cold water, so she remained aboard Second Treasure Just as we were about to head off, the crew of a catamaran, Felix the Cat, came by to ask if we knew where to go. They had just finished snorkeling and had a baggie of crackers left over from their adventure and offered them to us. They turned out to be quite a hit with the Sergeant Majors. Dan is almost as colorful as they are!

Mermaids Reef was just a colorful as the last time we were there even with the water being a little murky after all the high winds for the last 5 days.  Several different types of Parrot Fish, the skinny Ballyho and the everpresent grunts and sergeant majors.

         We had two different visitors right after we got out of the water. First a pair of porpoises passed right by us on their way into the harbor. We were treated to another visit from them while we took a sunset cruise once we had returned to the dock at the Moorings. The second visitors were Ed and Connie Dooley on their fast trawler. They were out for a ride with dock neighbors and we chatted and took pictures of their new boat. Dan also got a great shot of them as they returned from their trip to Hope Town. They also joined us for our sunset cruise this evening.

Dan caught two porpoises as they passed us out by the reef(upper left) and I had my smaller camera and got a few shots as we cruised around the harbor in our dinghy. The one, upper right, had a chunk missing from his dorsal fin.

Southern Pilot is an Island Pilot 435 and quite sleek and quite fast.  The sunset across the harbor was lovely and was greeted by a chorus of conch horns. Sadly mine is home --- too heavy to fly with!

Tomorrow brings another front with winds up to 30 knots, so we may opt to take an island ferry over to Hope Town for a visit. ~~~_/)~~~M&D, K&P