After a quiet night at the nearly empty Spanish Cay Marina, we enjoyed a nice, 10 mile long, light air sail to the Allans Cay anchorage. Being the only boat there, we dropped the hook onto the middle of the largest sand patch we could find, launched the dinghy and rowed ashore. The path to the Allans-Pensacola Yacht Club is still well marked and only a bit overgrown in spots. We followed it to the ocean side beach, about a quarter mile through the bushes. The "yacht club" begins at the "signing tree" where the path ends and extends about a hundred yards along the beach. Hanging from every branch of every tree are signs left by other cruisers and now one left by us. Most of the signs are plastic debris that had washed ashore and inscribed with boat names, crew names and dates. We found ours washed up on the beach at Spanish Cay and brought it along with us, marking it as we sailed. Some are very elaborate and likely worked on for many days before arrival here.

The beach is an absolute beauty, inside the barrier reef which is just visible along the horizon. It's one of the longest barrier reefs in the world and makes for perfect swimming conditions, which we took good advantage of.

Non-sailors with good memories may remember Allans-Pensacola as the site of one of the few NASA tracking stations during the Mercury program. I can still recall waiting anxiously for John Glenn to come into range of the next tracking station under his orbit while Walter Cronkite would say something like "two minutes and 40 seconds until he'll be in contact with the Allans-Pensacola tracking station." The ruins of the station are still there but the path to it is badly overgrown.

A few yards from the entrance to the APYC path is a humble structure grandly titled the Allans Cay Hilton. It's basically a two story chicken coop with one lonely chicken, a broken air conditioner, two fire pits, a bench, a few empty rum bottles and a sign saying "welcome. Don't abuse it. It's here for all."

Today we had a great sail (as opposed to Great Sale Cay) over flat water beating into a warm 10-20 knot ESE breeze. We're anchored off the government dock at Green Turtle Cay where I just signed up for the Bahamas Wimax service which provides WIFI coverage for all of the Abacos but not too much else. With our WIFI extender we're getting a strong signal and it's very fast. I don't know if there's a comparable service along Eleuthera where we'll likely be in a week or two.