17:05.674N  061:53.528W

Our third night at anchor ready for New Years Eve.  We are in a very lovely large bay, azure blue water, lush green hills, blue sky, or sometimes grey squally sky, it varies.  Sometimes cool Caribbean breeze, sometimes cold Caribbean downpour. 

Yesterday we did our first serious bit of reef navigation and found our way along the required narrow channel to anchor on Long Island, home of the Jumby Beach Resort which looked very tasteful.  On the island side we had several very large, very lovely villas amid the lush green foliage and white beaches to look at.  On the mainland, thankfully quite some way away, we had a desalination plant, factory, oil storage tanks and airport.

Today we are in a large bay, surrounded by lush green hills, azure water and white sandy beaches and a strange bald patch in the distance.  Binoculars out – it’s a landfill site!  Paradise has it’s little snags here and there.  We have just had our first go at laying a Bahamanian Mooring.  This means two anchors down in a straight line, both running off the front of the boat but one sits stretched out to the front the other to the rear.  The idea is that the boat can only move within a small area compared to the large swing you have on a traditional single anchor laid out in front.  This is to counteract the groundswell which can happen in this part of the world  that can move your boat a lot further than you want it to go, ie onto a beach. 

We had spent our first night out in a pretty anchorage with a few other yachts and a lovely view out to sea...

but got a bit of a fright when this appeared.....

The highlight for Carol here was that she really did see the elusive ‘Green Flash’ of legend.  She had happened to read that day that it is occasionally seen in the Caribbean and is much easier to see through binoculars.  So, handed the binoculars by Mike, as the sun was setting she was able to look closely as the sun was about to disappear and ‘Flash’ there it was.  A very bright lime green colour that seemed to run round the edge of the sun for a fraction of a second before it, and the sun, was gone.  We have been talking about the green flash and looking for it ever since we were with Duncan and Ria and Sea Topaz three years ago.  (Captain Jack Sparrow eat your heart out!)

Given our advanced years and general state of tiredness (takes it out of you this Trans-Atlantic stuff) we have decided to celebrate New Years Eve at UK time which meant 8pm local time so we should all be asleep by nine as usual.  Hopefully we can find the Big Ben Bongs on the World Service.