We waited out the strong winds in Pipe Cay anchored close to our friends on Atlas VII. It was quite windy, but we were anchored up pretty well and we were nicely protected as the winds wrapped around from the south through west to north.

Our chain seemed to get wrapped around a rock at some point during the whole wind event, and we ended up swinging a bit funny because of it.

We had a nice dinner and board games on our boat with Atlas our second night there. They were leaving to head south (on their way to the DR) the next morning, and this would sadly be the last we'd see of them on this trip. It's hard to say goodbye, especially after they had resuced us from our grounding and we'd knew we'd be all on our own from now on. But we said goodbye and wished them all the best.

That night was calm, but weirdly enough we ended up bumping into Atlas in the middle of the night. Not sure what happened exactly, currents and our funny anchoring maybe, but we just lightly bumped side to side. Super scary while you're snuggled up in bed, but thankfully it was light, and it wasn't the night before in the crazy wind and waves.

We shortened up scope (we had a lot of rode out from the windy night before), and Atlas decided to re-anchor to be safe from our sleep walking.

The next day we were all on our own, and everyone else that was anchored up here for the winds also headed out. I think it was just us and one other boat that stayed the next day. We spent a long lazy day on the beach and did some planning in regards to our next stops and the weather.

It was decided we'd move the next day and so we pulled up anchor and motored a short distance to Foul Cay just 3NM away to anchor and wait for low slack tide to explore the nearby caves at Rocky Dundas. We rowed over and jumped in. These are some large caves, and pretty neat to see. Also lots of big coral to snorkel in front of them, which was also fun. Unfortunately no pictures as Aria's underwater camera got saltwater in it a few weeks ago and is no more.

We headed back to the boat around noon, and sailed off anchor from Foul Cay and back to the Exuma Bank to head to Malabar Cays just outside of Warderick Wells to anchor up for the night. Great sailing winds and we had a wonderful but short 17NM sail to the anchorage. A bit rolly but we were just there for the night, ready to head out in the morning further north to Shroud Cay.