March 11, 2018 – Highbourne Cay Marina, Exumas

The heavens opened up around 3am along with lots of lightning, although not really close as there was minimal thunder.  It did not give up and at times the thunder was more audible. We had a reservation for three nights at Highbourne and they have a 24 hour cancellation policy so we were paying for the first night whether we got there or not. We of course still had no cell or data connection. It was still raining quite heavily when the 9am VHF session started. We and another boat said we had planned to leave but wanted to wait to see if the weather was going to clear at all. Bob realized that radar on the boat provides weather for a 28 mile swath, he was able to get some weather data which seemed to indicate it was an eight mile band. Finally closer to 11 it looked like things were starting to clear a bit so we were leaning toward leaving around 11:45. Shortly after 11 we saw two boats slowly moving out so that was it, we left at 11:20, feeling more comfortable that we weren’t the only ones leaving.

The weather cleared more and more and by half way through to Highcroft it was sunny. Bob commented, we would have been really pissed off at ourselves if we had chickened out on leaving and were sitting at Wardrick, as wonderful as it is, in the afternoon sunshine ?

Of course the winds we were now very light. We put up the jib for a while and motor sailed but the jib didn’t do much except flop around now and then. We were surprised at how long it took to get a cell connection considering there is a huge cell tower on Highbourne. Our main aim was to reach Zuma, the fabulous restaurant on the island, in time to make a dinner reservation for tonight, especially as they are closed on Mondays. Their tables were all booked but we got a reservation at the bar. The food was as wonderful as we remembered from last year. A good end to a cloudy start.

G&Ts at Zuma

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