While Hawksbill Cay was nice, the anchorage was rolly last night, even with very little wind. Luckily, our boat handles a light to moderate swell fairly well, and although we had a few rocking horse moments, we were not uncomfortable. We left this morning after coffee and decided to head for Normans Cay, our first repeat anchorage so far this trip. We originally thought we’d go to Allans Cay, but the wind is forecast to start turning west in the middle of the night and we knew from our previous stay that the area behind Normans worked well in a W or SW wind. It made for a relatively short trip today (just 12 miles) but positions us well for our 41 mile trip to Palm Cay tomorrow. There will be some rain tomorrow, but we should have a sailing wind for a good part of the trip.

There are four other boats anchored here in Normans with us, markedly less than the 16 boats that were here a month ago on our previous visit. We are positioned to have a very nice view of Wax Cay (featured picture) and its nice little vacation cottages. We noticed that there appears to be some progress being made on the luxury marina they are building here at the south end of Normans. This could be a much different place if we return a year from now.

Paula was able to make souse for dinner tonight using the last of our shrimp and scallops. We had paprika potatoes with sautéed onions as a side dish. Besides cleaning and re-provisioning, another thing we need to do when we get to port tomorrow is defrost the freezer. The temperature in the box has been creeping up the last several days, mostly do to a lot of ice build-up on the evaporator plate. Normally we defrost it on a monthly basis, and every time it is a bit of a production because we need to transfer everything into coolers with ice while the defrosting procedure commences. We’ve now gone almost three months since the last defrost and it badly needs it. This time it should be an easier process as the freezer is nearly empty.