Ragged to Thompson Bay

January 23 – January 30.

We have fun getting to know the cruisers when Steve and Kim host a happy hour on Fine Lion. More boats come in. But after a week in one spot, it’s time to move on. The whole group has a nice sail up to nearby Hog Cay, where the cruisers have set up a party area on the beach.

We enjoy hiking the trails of Hog Cay. Everyone else plans to stay, but it’s time for us to start working our way back.

We sail to Raccoon Cay, where we do some diving and exploring. Then we bypass Edward on Buena Vista to go to Nurse Cay. Unfortunately, we would need machetes to get to the interior of this isle. No trails. The surge is pretty bad here too.

It’s time for the 40 mile hop northward. The wind is in the right direction. It’s not extreme. But we still travel with shortened sails (as we have the whole time we were in the Jumentos). The tide is rising, and we have a nice sail across miles of open water around challel Cay, between the reefs near Jamaica Cay, past the hard shallow bars by Man O War Cay, to the western side of Flamingo Cay.

We stay here a day, dinking around the north side to get some conch. Then we go up to Water Cay. Here the waves are surging from several different directions but me and my bridle find a happy medium and enjoy a full night’s sleep. I guess ospreys sleep at night, too, or they would have been haranguing us.

It’s a 40 mile sail back to Thompson Bay, Long Island. Experience has told us we don’t want to split up the trip. We leave at sunrise. We get enough tail wind to average 7 knots to the Comer West waypoint. Here with a combination of motor and sail we glide just over the bottom until we get to Comer East. We arrive in Thompson Bay before sunset, happy to have huge Long Island between us and the Atlantic Ocean.