Hey Dave,

This is Castle Island, off the southwest tip of Acklins, coincidentally almost precisely halfway to the equator from Barnegat Bay... Spent about a week exploring the Bight of Acklins, a very remote and increasingly abandoned area of the Bahamas, and which has become one of my favorite spots... I was one of three boats in there last week, an area perhaps about 1/3 of the size of Long Island Sound...

Yesterday, a 68' Azimut named AQUA DOLL went up on the reef north of Conception Island... Hard to imagine how it could have happened, it was a calm, picture-perfect day... Sounds like the boat has been for sale for awhile, so who knows? (grin) No great loss, everyone got off OK, and the world can certainly do with one less $2 million ugly-ass motoryacht, but this could turn out to be bad news for Bahamian cruisers over the long haul, as Conception is a truly pristine place, part of the Bahamian National Trust, akin to the status of a national park... There will likely be some fuel spilled, and of course damage to Southampton Reef, one of the most beautiful in this area, so there might be some bad ramifications for cruisers in the future...

best regards,

Jon