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We begin this post with a lesson in navigating in the Bahamas. Sunshine is critical. Take a look at the first photo, taken while it was cloudy. You can't tell that the water gets quite shallow near the islands. You can't tell at all. But once the sun comes out, it's immediately clear the water is incredibly thin even a hundred feet out. Sun is incredibly important for safe navigation in the Bahamas.

It was on this passage that I finally crossed the Tropic of Cancer. I officially entered the tropics! The next islands visited are tropical isles! Okay, the distinction is incredibly academic, but it's worth a little celebration. I've got a shot of the GPS showing a latitude of 23° 26.4'. Looking up Tropic of Cancer on Wikipedia shows 23° 26.22'. But my nautical almanac shows the northernmost declination of the sun as 23° 26.4'. So that's what I went with. The difference is about 1000 feet, which, in relation to the circumference of the Earth, is really not a big deal.

All Aboard! The failboat is leaving port! It happens to all of us. Hard aground. I was cutting through Hog Cay cut, which has really strong currents, and there was very light wind. The cut itself bends, and the sun went behind a cloud so I couldn't tell where I needed to be. I couldn't have gotten there anyway. After trying a few things, I just sat down with a book and waited for the tide to lift me up. I would drag a few feet, then get stuck a little further along the bar. In the end, I dragged about 100 yards, over the course of 2 hours, before finally coming into deeper water.