The swell that came through our anchorage and caused all the boats to bounce around so much finally subsided around mid-night. We did not expect there to be any surge/swell since the wind was very light and had been so all day long, and it was quite calm in the anchorage the night before. We’ll have to learn more about what causes this and if it’s possible to predict its occurrence.

It was relatively calm come dawn, making for nice conditions to have coffee, listen to the latest weather forecast, and ready the cabin for sailing. We try to keep things neat while at anchor. We do find that for ease of use, certain items closed, stowed, or lashed away under sailing conditions tend to migrate about the boat when we have more than an overnight’s stay in an anchorage.

We weighed anchor and took off on a relatively short jaunt to Palm Cay Marina around 9:00AM. Pam Cay is on the southeast corner of New Providence Island and the capitol city of Nassau is on the northern part of the island. The winds were already freshening but since they were on the nose most of the way we didn’t put the sails up. In addition, there were marked coral heads on our course to be wary of (represented by + signs on the chart) and we wanted to choose our way carefully to avoid these. Again, not many boats seen today. The channel to Palm Cay was well-marked, with big red balls affixed to the coral heads where they intruded along the edges of the channel. From C Ghost’s bow, these heads appeared as ominous, amorphous, green shapes in the 11 foot deep clear water. One or two had little whitecaps over them, indicating just how shallow the water above their tops was, but in other cases it was impossible to tell how high they reached above the sea floor. As novices dealing with the coral heads, we proceeded with caution and some anxiety.
As we approached the entrance the marina promptly answered our radio hail, and as the gas dock was free, we were able to top off our tanks with 56 gallons of diesel. We were momentarily perplexed at the color of the fuel – marine diesel in the states is dyed a pinkish red but here the fuel has no dye and is clear.

Our slip is in the first fairway after the gas dock in a protected basin. We were able to tie up without problems. The marina hands let us know the tidal range (3 feet) and that bad weather was expected (we knew).

Palm Cay is a new, large, upscale marina with attached condos, huge pool, private beach, large boat charter company, workout facility, restaurant, spa and nails, etc.

The marina is undergoing further construction on the North side (more condos and amenities) and when we walked around out of the marina we noticed several additional gated communities springing up. We had to go past a guard hut and security gate to walk out past the main to get ice cream and view Solomon’s Yamacraw which is a full-service grocery and pharmacy. It has everything, and prices are similar to Florida except we suspect the 7.5% VAT tax will be added. They have a courtesy car at the marina and we signed up to use it tomorrow morning from 9-11 a.m. to stock up on groceries.

We tried the marina restaurant for dinner. It is open air leading to the beach and has a varied menu offering everything from pizza and burgers to seafood and steak entrees. While we waited for our meals we saw the marina send out a small motorized dinghy with staff member to guide in a sailboat that was having some uncertainty about the path through the coral heads. The staff member tied his dinghy to the stern of the approaching vessel and stood up to give advice to the captain.

Dinner arrived quickly and it was great. Tommy had Caesar salad  and a BBQ pineapple pizza and Paula had conch chowder and chicken fettuccini. We split guava cheesecake for dessert. As we ate a band set up on the beach and as we write it is playing a variety of tunes. The moon is just past full and the temperature is in the low 80s. The promised strong winds are just starting to blow from the northwest.