Little Bahama Banks, West End to Great Sale.

We left West End early, for me at least, at 7:30a on 2/27/2016. We had to get up at 6a to make that happen. There is so much to do in order to make a sailboat ready to go!

Lots of people from the Old Bahama Bay marina were heading towards Great Sale, as it was the first mild day since the previous weekend, when we’d crossed from Florida.

At first we had planned to go all the way up to Memory Rock, over 16 miles north of West End. Then we heard others talking about the Indian Cay cut, and seriously considered it, but we couldn’t find any chart notation that would assure us that we wouldn’t run aground, so we skipped it, went four miles further and found what we thought was our own private cut onto the Banks, just south of Sandy Cay. Later we found it in the Dodge guide, so I guess we didn’t discover it! We didn’t know it was a thing though, so at first I stood at the bow shouting about possible shallow spots. It was sort of terrifying. It all worked out though and we saved ourselves at least 10 miles which is a lot on a sailboat!

The water on the Banks is beautiful – clear and shining turquoise! We saw several boats throughout the day, although none close up, probably mostly our dock mates from OBB. It was our second experience being out of sight of land, only this time the water was only 20 feet deep instead of 1500 feet like the crossing.

We pulled into Great Sale around 5:45p after a 50 mile trip. It is a pretty anchorage in the lee of a little hook shaped cay. We tucked in next to the long peninsula, set the anchor and made dinner.

Jacob had heard that Great Sale was especially dark at night, and it really was! We all star gazed on deck after dinner. We found Ursa Major, watched two satellites go across the sky, and Loey made up some constellations of her own. Audrey had fun finding the real constellations to match the ones she’s been learning about in her glow-in-the-dark constellation guide.