We left Alabaster Bay at 8 am for the 30 mile run to Spanish Wells.   We got up early and saw a beautiful sunrise.  The entrance to the Spanish Wells area is through a cut from Exuma Bank to a large bay area.    All cruising guides and charts warn to only enter this cut at slack tide.  Slack tide is when the tide stops moving, thus there is little or no current.  The tide varies each day and today slack tide was at 4 pm.  Therefore, we had 8 hours to get there.  We had a following wind of about 6 kts when we began so obviously we were motorsailing, but at the 5 kts we were going we would get there early. 

It is always our plan to leave early with more time than we might need.  It’s much easier to slow down than to speed up.  Since Seas the Day relies on batteries and an electric engine if we push the throttle too far, we start using the batteries.  The wind sped up to about 13 kts so we turned off the generator and simply sailed.  Occasionally we would turn on the electric engine, which uses no fuel, to give our speed a slight boost.  There were squalls in the area but we only got a few sprinkles. 

After we arrived at our anchorage in Royal Island, the skies opened and Seas the Day got a nice bath.  When the rain stopped we saw a rainbow which seemed to go into the water near where we were anchored. Tomorrow we’ll move to a mooring ball in Spanish Wells.