We managed to stick out a couple of nights at Great Abaco. We had good wind protection, but quite a bit of waves rolling in, which made it rather uncomfortable at anchor. But it wasn't horrible and maybe our least bad option.

We did however make the most of it by spending the days on the very large beach which we had all to ourselves. There was also a nice little mangrove area we did a paddle through on the dingy. And we saw some more sharks here too.

The beach here seemed pretty unvisited as I don't think many people anchor here, and there isn't any other access than by boat. It made for a lot of great shell collecting and exploring on the beach. I even found a neat looking weather buoy that had washed up on the beach. I moved it into the sun, so that maybe the solar can charge the battery and it can report back home?

We setup a nice little shade and encampment on the beach where we did some beach school and reading on the beach. I also built a hammock from a fishing net I found. I never did get to use it much unfortunately, but it was fun to build at the very least.

Our second day we had a short day ashore and met up with a boat named Bluemoon which we had met way back in the Chesapeake. They have two girls near Aria's age. But we didn't get much time ashore today as a big rain system was rolling in, and with thunder in the distance we headed back to the boat.

The rain did finally come and it was intense. It almost filled up the entire dingy, and we ended up topping off one of our freshwater tanks (15 gallons), and filling a 6 gallon jug as well. It was so much water I ended up having to bail the dingy with our big bucket. It feels wasteful to throw that much fresh water into the ocean, but, only so many places we can store that much water!

The next morning the wind had come around and it was even more wavey than before. Aria was invited over to Bluemoon, but we had to cancel as the waves were a bit much to dingy over in.

We had planned to get into Green Turtle finally, and with the more northerly winds it was finally time and we headed directly over there to anchor up out front.

We rowed in, and Aria and I rowed over to get a jerry can of diesel so we'd be topped off for our trip back to the states. We then all met up in town and went out for lunch at the Plymouth Rock Liquors & Cafe, which is a full liquor store with a cafe, as the name implies. They also serve a lunch and we had a really great meal. I ordered a Dave's burger which was enormous and exactly what I was craving (it's a week later as I write this and I'm still thinking about it). We toured around town and visited a few shops and got some supplies and groceries, etc.

We also visited a Loyalist Memorial which was very interesting. A fair number of Loyalists ended up in the Bahamas after re-locating from the US after independence. This was a neat connection to home as we are from Loyalist Township, which is a lot of the same history but a much different climate...

We could certainly spend more time at Green Turtle, but weather is always pushing us around. So we pulled up anchor that evening after getting back to the boat and made a tiny sail over to Manjack Cay at the main anchorage which was busy (I think I counted 23 boats), but quite a large anchorage and great protection. We anchored in 7 feet of water which is a bit stressful with a 6 foot draft, but it is just how it is here. As we got anchored up we noticed Bluemoon had also moved here and were not far away, so we were able to meet up with them the next day.