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Towards Abacos and end of trip. We said good-bye to the beautiful Exumas yesterday as we were heading towards Eleuthera, out present location. (Ignore the map,it gor screwed up. We are not in Buffalo) We left with “Briarpatch”, our buddy boat, early yesterday morning i.n strong wind from a south easterly direction. We had spent two nights in the Marine Park at Cambridge and snorkelled in the sea aquarium, where we were surrounded by many tropical fish. The dinghy ride back to the boat was long, wet and uncomfortable. Don was decked out in his snorkeling gear and I in a garbage bag. The anchorage at Cambridge is just beautiful, with its low landing landscape surrounding us and the colours of the water that never stop to amaze us with its beauty. You cannot help but feeling happy and thankful and at peace when you let all of this sink in. Our experiences with the weather have been that it is mostly blowing around 20 knots or more (more than normally for Bahamas) and that means we stay put until a weather window opens up with more comfortable wind and this lasts for a few days. Yesterday, with the wind still quite strong, we had some waves that were 8 to 10 feet. At first they were a little initmidating but after a while they were fun. Our speed was over seven knots most of the time and we actually saw 10.5 knots at one tme. Ths was gps speed since ur water knotmeter died before we left the U.S. For Don, this was one of the best sailing experiences he has had for a while, disregarding the race around Stocking Island in Georgetown, in 20 knots of wind and close-hauled and the rail sometimes a foot under water. At present we are motor sailing in little wind towards Hatchett Bay. We hope to be in Spanish Wells tomorrow afternoon. It is a place worth visiting. Don just caught a 3.5 foot Barracuda. It would not taste good and those big teath sure looked scary. After a good dose of alcohol it was sufficiently comatose to allow Don to remove the hook and let it go. There are moments of excitement on the boat such as when we discover that we have caught something on the line that we are trailing behind. We were hoping for another Mahi Mahi but that would be too much of good luck. Later the line was hit but after reeling in the line we found our lure was chopped in half and the hook gone. In three days we plan to cross the North East Providence Channel from Royal Island, near Spanish Wells, to Little Harbour on Great Abaco Island. This will require about 11 hours to travel the 55 miles. The wind and weather is supposed to be fine. Boats have been waiting over two weeks to do this crossing. It is not something one wants to take lightly. For that matter there are lots of things such as inlets, cuts, surges and currents that we have learned to take seriously. Chris Parker, the weather guy, here talks sometimes about conditions that will “roll your eyes out”. We know what he means.