I can't believe it has been almost a month since our last log update...time has flown! 
We had a series of fronts sweep through in succession which kept us pinned in Green Turtle Cay till January 9th. This was NOT hard to take as Green Turtle is a wonderful little island. Christmas on the boat with Noelle and Chris was wonderful as we all shared our small gifts and company and had a wonderful Christmas dinner buffet at the club which included turkey with all the trimmings, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and great desserts. 
I signed up for the Scuba Certification at Brendal's Dive Center and spent about a week studying and diving on the reefs on the Atlantic side of Manjack Cay which is one Cay north of Green Turtle (a couple of miles). On the Sunday after Christmas the whole family went out with the dive group and snorkled on the reef while I took my lessons. Brendal had caught a bunch of lobsters and speared some fresh snapper which we then roasted on the beach accompanied by Goombay smashes which Chris found much to his liking!
 The reefs lie about 1/2 mile offshore and are quite close to the surface but drop a thousand feet or more on their Atlantic side. They are quite awesome with all different types and colors of coral formations including Elkhorn coral, purple fans and huge brain coral heads. The fish range from brilliant little "aquarium" fish to huge groupers, rays and nurse sharks. Brendal has a "trained" grouper of about 50 pounds in one spot that you can feed and pet. The seas were pretty choppy most of the week but below it was a wonderland...what a great place to learn to dive. On my final certification dive Noelle accompanied us since she is already certified and had a great time. I'll look forward to diving with my "buddy" in the future now that we are both certified!

The rest of our time at Green Turtle was spent on our rented bicycles exploring the many beaches and reefs and the town of New Plymouth where we were able to shop for groceries and keep up with our e-mail. We enjoyed the New Year's Junkanoo parade there along with the native food stands and the colorful atmosphere. The following day was our 30th anniversary...I can't believe we've been happy together for so long...it seems just a few years but no one could ask for a better true companion in life!
We all celebrated at the Green Turtle Club and chef Mike put together a home-made ice cream cake after the feast.....yummy!
We've also made quite a few friends among the cruisers here and we enjoy each others company, and talk of boats and which place to go next. The cruisers net of VHF 68 each morning keeps us in touch with each other and with events throughout the Abacos.
On our last morning in Green Turtle, Chris and I "discovered" a new reef and beach at the north end of the island which was lovely and provided me with my first opportunity to spear a lobster using my Hawaiian Sling (sort of like a spear fired by a slingshot). That got us all excited and I think Chris wished we had discovered this on the first day of our arrival rather than the last!

We had to get over to Marsh Harbor on the big island of Abaco in order for the kids to catch their planes back to reality and finally got a weather break to do that on the 8th. To get from Green Turtle to Marsh you have to negotiate an ocean passage through the reefs called "the Whale" so you have to wait for settled weather to do that. Otherwise it a just a 3 hour sail with no hazards. We pulled into Marsh without any problems and settled in for a few days at the Conch Inn Marina. After seeing the kids off the next day (we miss you already...but our food lasts a lot longer now!!),... we spent a couple of days re-provisioning our boat from the two good grocery stores, cleaning up the boat and scouting up other essentials. Marsh Harbor is the largest town in the Abacos with about 4000 residents and a well protected harbor. It is safe, the people are friendly and you can find just about anything you need at prices that are lower than the outlying cays....(but nothing is cheap here except flour and butter!) . Nevertheless, it is not a pretty place and we did not wish to linger.... so it was on to Great Guana Cay.

An easy 12 mile sail brought us into Orchid Bay... one of 3 anchorages here... where there is a small settlement.
There are only 95 residents on the island...so just the basics are available...but oh what a beautiful place! We anchored in the protected cove for a week and enjoyed the company of four other couples on boats...3 Canadian boats and one trawler from Maine. It is amazing how many "Canucks" are here in Abaco...probably a third of the boats we see are flying the maple leaf and most are in boats of 30-35 feet...true adventurers and down to earth folks who enjoy the simple things in life and will go out of their way to help a neighbor.
We enjoyed beautiful calm weather for the entire week and had to rely on our solar panels to charge the batteries as the wind vane had nothing to work with. The seas were like glass and you could clearly see the bottom 60 feet or so below the reefs as we snorkeled together in search of lobsters. We all took our dinghy's several miles around the southern end of Guana to get to the ocean reefs. There we tied up together and dropped our anchors in the sand in front of the reef. Can you imagine how it feels to bob slowly on the ocean swells looking over a crystal clear sea of a hundred hues of blue and green? To top it off...the reef itself was so beautiful and pristine...and though the lobsters were tough to find and get...we always managed to take some home! What a life!!

We left Guana on Jan's birthday...the 20th... and vowed to return again. We wanted to explore a bit more of the Abacos. We headed south to Man O' War Cay to drop off a spear I had borrowed from our friend Bob on his Bayfield 32 "Zepharia" and then back to Marsh Harbor to do some provisioning, bill paying and of course, birthday celebrating. We pulled into the Conch Inn dock and Janet recognized the lady on the boat next to us...as the cashier in the Richmond West Marine store! The boat was Lilliana from Deltaville....1500 miles sailed only to end up next to another Deltaville boat!
Our next surprise was Wayne (one of our Canadian friends from on the boat "Brodicity"), coming along the dock with a birthday card for Janet from all four boats we met in Guana.  She was touched by their thoughtfulness and it made her day special. We had a great dinner at Mangoes where I tried Wahoo for the first time...delicious...like swordfish but more tender. Tomorrow we will take care of a bunch of errands and provisioning and then it will be on to Hope Town and their famous lighthouse for a couple of days.