Green Turtle Cay Wed April 12th

We left Manjack Cay Wed. and went to the Bluff House Marina, Green Turtle Cay. We  got tied up before the 5 days of forcasted winds started blowing. At this point we are starting to look for a weather window to cross the Gulf Stream back to Florida.  We ended up staying 6 nights here.

Thursday night is Pizza night and we splurged on a Lobster Pizza an a Jerk Chicken Pizza.  Great lunch leftovers! When the winds would subside we would take the dink out and  cruise around the Island and go to New Providence for provisions. One of the quirky things here is they have a well stocked liqueur store with a lunch counter.  They serve great burgers! Tom and Julie came in on Friday and we rented a Golf card with them and did some land based exploring including stopping at Pineapples for a Gumbay Smash.  On Easter Sunday we took the dingy over to the Green Turtle Club for an outstanding dinner.

On Tuesday morning we left Green Turtle Cay around 8:30 and cruised up to Allen's-Pensacola Cay and anchored out for the night.  On Wednesday we cruised to Great Sail Cay and a huge anchorage. which by evening time head 30 boats at anchor.  One of the very bizarre thing you can see here are called fish mud's,  The anchorage water was a milky blue. This is caused be schools of fish churning up the bottom. The entire anchorage was churned up at one point.  We even saw large patches of these fish mud's in the middle of the Bahama Bank.

On Thursday we headed to Old Bahama Bay Marina at West End.  This is were we departed for Florida on Friday morning.  All week the weather forecasts said that  Friday would have light winds and waves 2-3 feet.  Friday morning it was blowing a solid 15 knots and waves now predicted at 3-4 feet.  We checked the wind direction which was going to be blowing from the South East and the Gulf Stream runs South to North.  Our 82 Mile run to Florida would be at an angle from West End to Stuart.

As it turned out we had winds pretty much on the stern most of the way.  We  did a little surfing down the waves when we would get a 6 footer.  All in all, a fairly comfortable ride with no breaking waves. Seven hours latter we crossed the St Lucie Inlet and Stuart Florida! Back to the good old USA!!!

After waiting out a Thunderstorm Sunday morning we left Stuart for the run across Lake Okeechobee.

It rained for half of the 92 mile 9 hour run to  River Forest where we stopped for the night. The next morning we cruised for another 7 hours and arrived back at SnookBight Marina in Ft Myers Beach.

As if on Que we had dolphins escort us for a while as we were approaching  Ft Myers. SnookBight is now our home Marina in Florida.  Putz'n Around will spend the summer here in the water.  If there is a named storm the Marina will lift the boat out and put her in a hurricane rated building.

 
That's it for this post. We will head home on the 11th of April.  I will post one more time with trip stats, in about a week.  In the mean time we are going to relax with good friends and get some beach time.  The last time I checked it was 39 and snow was in the forecast in Minnesota!