Georgetown, Exumas

 

Another orange sunset on our passage from Fajardo, Puerto Rico to Georgetown, Exumas, Bahamas where we planned to stop for a quick rest before pushing on. It was an easy passage, with consistent 10 to 15 knot winds driving us downwind.

We were not going to make the somewhat tricky entrance to Georgetown by dark so we decided to stop for an overnight at an anchorage on Conception Island.  After having sunny skies everyday of our 4 day passage the weather decided to get gray and overcast for our stay on Conception. Not much opportunity to snorkel, but we did get in some good beach walks. Got up at 0:dark thirty and did the 6 hour sail to Georgetown.

It was an easy clear into the Bahamas. The Bahamas requires a Covid antigen test within 3 days of arrival. This is pretty tough when the passage time is longer. But we had no issues checking in: it was easy, if not a bit on the expensive side.

Just so we don't completely forget in our old age, here's a few pictures of the Old Town in San Juan that we visited in our brief stop in Puerto Rico. This is the view from the ramparts of Castillo San Felipe del Morro, known as 'El Morro'. San Juan city was founded by the Spanish colonizers in 1521 and El Morro construction began in 1539 to protect the entrance to San Juan from the sea.

The old town has street after street of colorful old buildings, many of the streets are paved with "adoquines" cobblestones made of blue stone cast from furnace slag carried to Puerto Rico as ballast aboard Spanish ships

An iguana guarding the old fort wall.

No HOA requiring that all the old town buildings be painted the same color resulting in a typical Caribbean color scheme.

_____________________________________________________________

Our plan was to arrive on the East Coast within the next few days. However, the weather seems to be in our way. Above is a forecast from the ECMWF Euro weather model for this coming Sunday (downloaded 5/31) predicting a nasty low between us and North Carolina. There's a good chance we'd end up in the middle of it if we left now. So being the prudent mariners that we are, the plan is to wait a bit and let the weather models coalesce into some decent agreement, and then do the passage north when this low dissipates.  It is interesting that this low is basically the remains of the hurricane Agnes that just hit the Pacific coast of southern Mexico and passed across the isthmus to effect weather in the Gulf of Mexico.  With the major models being so divergent, it is anyone's call whether this low will become a serious event or just another bit of rain and wind.

Paul