Date: Wednesday 7^th January 2015

Position: 23:31.155N 75:45.546W

We had stayed on the shallow banks side of the Exuma Island chain for as long as was possible with our draft, so any further progress southwards would now have to be in the open ocean on the sound side of the chain.  We left Black Rock at first light on Tuesday morning and sailed through the cut just north of Great Guana Cay to enter the waters of the sound.  The wind was strong enough for us to sail, but as we have experienced so often this year, was from a direction that was almost exactly opposite to that of our desired course.  Nevertheless we sailed close hauled for most of the morning, tacking along the islands until the wind started to weaken.  There was a contrary current trying to push us back the direction we had come from so the end result after several hours sailing was not very much in terms of distance to our desired destination.

By lunchtime it was clear that we would have to resort to using the engine again, so we rolled away the jib and motor sailed to the northern entrance to Georgetown.  We arrived late afternoon and carefully worked our way through the shallow approach to the anchorage in Elisabeth Harbour. At times we only had about 6 inches of water below our keel but we gingerly made our way to a point where we could anchor.  The harbour was very busy with other anchored boats but eventually we found a spot that was very close to where we had stopped when we had last been in Georgetown on our way northwards last year.