Anchored in Great Guana Cay

On April 7, we left Marsh Harbor and headed over to Great Guana Cay. It’s a quick ride, just a few miles, and we motored until we found a good spot to anchor.

We’ve done so much anchoring on this adventure, and we’ve never showed you how we do it. I go forward while we’re motoring into the anchorage and open up the anchor locker to get the windlass control out.

Then I wait for the signal from Patrick, who is driving around to find a spot to drop the hook.

On his signal, I’ll deploy the anchor by pressing the “out” button on the windlass control. We have red zip ties on the chain every 10 feet, which I count as they go by. We usually anchor at a scope of around 7-to-1 (or more, if there is enough room around us).

Once the anchor is down at the scope we’d prefer, and we’ve backed down on it to make sure it’s dug in and holding well (all managed through hand signals; no yelling back and forth allowed!), I put the anchor snubber on the line.

This takes any strain off the windlass by diverting the load to the snubber, which is tied off on one of the bow cleats.

We set an anchor alarm to alert us if we should drift beyond the expected radius of our anchor chain area, and that’s that!

We spent the night there, and most of the day on the boat the next day, when the weather wasn’t the greatest. Cecelia and Patrick went to shore for a quick visit, though, and our cabin bunnies came out to play for a bit, too (Cecelia can reach through one of her windows into the cockpit, below the seats).

We didn’t see much of the eclipse, but our friends on Sorn got a great shot of it.