1st day Bahamas

We awoke the folowing morning to sunshine, hot weather, and so much humidity that you could drown a rat. My face and body glistens with sweat. There is no chance of looking any kind of cute over here. I will be lucky if I smell good. The water is a lovely aqua green though it must be a little sandy, there is nothing to see on the bottom. Mark went over to sign into customs after putting up our yellow Q flag. He returned with what seemed like a stack of papers that we had to fill out. We returned all of  the completed questions plus showed our pasports, $150. We had to mention that we wanted the fishing license. It was no extra $ but it is not just offered up. We also paid  $89.70 for a 30 ft. boat min. and we were all set. 
We walked up to the marina office and bought 2 COLD diet cokes, a couple of cards and used their computer for WIFI. We couldn't get the signal down on the docks. When we came back to our boat we found a new friend, Walter. He has the 36ft sailboat next to us.
He is from Guatemala and is being paid by the owner to sail his boat across the ocean to him in Spain. He asked us if we woild like a bowl of conch chowder that he made this morning. Would we ever! It was a clear stock, carrots, onion, cayenne pepper with big  half dollar sized pieces of yellow meat that I would describe as chewy clam meat. It was delicious. I love that our first conch was shared with us and not bought.
We blew up the dinghy and stored it on the bow of the boat. Then set sail for our next destination, Mangrove Cay. It was 36 miles away. We were sailing 5 knots when heading north but when we turned East at Memory Rock we needed the motor as the wind was straight on us again. We put out the two fishing poles to troll behind us. After a bit Mark landed what we think is a barracuda. He was 22" long. He had huge very pointy teeth. Mark fileted him and we were going to have it for lunch. But after looking in our book for fish identification I found that some of the fish here, namely barracuda, have what is called ciguatera poison. Ciguatera is a result of eating the larger fish in a certain species higher up the food chain. Ie. the fish that eat the fish that eat the coral. The symptoms are numerous and will onset pretty much immediately and can be mild to fatal. Symptoms can last from months to years. Relapses often occur. Now granted his fish wasn't the largest in the species by far, but it scared me away. So I had salad and he had grilled fish. I did taste it hough and it was AMAZING,! I caught a barracuda as well after lunch that was much bigger. I just had to show him how it was done. We threw him back. That is big for me. I am a catch em and eat em sort of girl. Around 4:00 the seas started bucking again. About 8:00 the sun had gone down and we have realized that we will not make our destination. Everytime that a wave hits the bow we slow to 1 knot. We still have 10 miles to go. It would take us over 5 hours to get there at this pace.  Everywhere that we have traveled today has been crystal green water and 12 ft. deep. So, we decided to anchor there in the middle of the ocean. It should have been on our bucket list but it is now.
To take our minds off off where we were and the bouncing of the boat we watched a dvd on the laptop, Something About Mary. It is a funny movie and it helped a bit but midway through we decided to turn in and try to sleep. I have to tell you that we will never anchor in the middle of the ocean like that again. It was the most horrific night that we have spent. The anchor at the bow but we were turned sideways with the waves. The boat was thrown sideways left and right all night long with the rails both starbord and port being immersed in the water. We lay in our bunks looking out the companionway at the the beautiful starry night with complete fear in us as our mast corkscrews around. We feel like we are on agitation cycle in the washing machine. Not much sleep was  had by either of us.
Our GPS has a setting on it that allows us to turn on an anchor alarm. We enter into the GPS a  short distance from where we are and if we were to break loose or drag the anchor across that perimeter then the alarm sounds until we shut it off. What piece of mind that gave us. That is golden right there.
Morning came and we did sleep a little but very lightly. We made it through and I can't tell you how much I wanted to just hot tail it out of there.
First time Bahamas cruiser tips  (FTBCT) #1...don't anchor in the middle of the ocean, no matter the depth.
Love always,
Shawnae and Mark