The early morning brought sunshine, 8 – 15 knots of wind, blue skies with puffy white cumulus clouds and no indications of worsening weather.
There are those of us that find swimming pigs to be an irresistible attraction, I’m not one of them. But one must spread the joy where one can. We needed to pay the park for anchoring at the Emerald field so we dinghied over to the park office, tied up to the dinghy dock and walked up 2 flights of stairs to the office and it’s an unbelievable sight, in a single image there is an example of every kind of water depth (by color) in the Bahamas. The deep turquoise blue is 6-foot, the light blue is 5-foot, as the blue gets lighter and light, it get shallower and shallower until you get the white, the sand. The view is impressive.
We weighed anchor; I hoisted the main sail and off we went… Our next stop is Big Major’s Spot (home of the swimming pigs and only a stones-throw from the Thunder Ball Grotto). Last night I plotted a course and if the wind stays E to SE, it will be a fabulous day to sail. We motored out past a 200-foot super-yacht; they must have all still been sleeping. I came to our first turn, it’s a course heading we will be on for at least an hour. Set the auto-pilot, sheeted in the main and we took off, everything was in balance and in tune. Next, I unfurled the head sail, you could feel the acceleration as I sheeted her in as well. We were sailing close to the wind, but were averaging 6+ knots and the first leg of the trip went by quickly. On the second leg we had to sail even closer to the wind, but I found a sweet spot and we continued on a wonderful sail. I didn’t douse the sails until we were almost in the anchorage.
Water depth into the anchorage was deep and we picked out a spot and anchored with about 30 other sailboats. I was worried about enough room when I look with the binoculars on the way in, but this anchorage is so big there is lots of room, for lots of boats of all kinds. Close to where we anchored were 2 super-yachts in the 150–200-foot range. They both had there slides out for the charter guests of use. The slides allow the passengers to enter the slide on the upper deck and splash into the water, probably a drop of 50 or more feet.
With the boat secured we got in the dinghy ready for a trip to ‘Pig Beach’, Sarah packed the apples she bought in Nassau specifically to feed them. We motor to the beach, the dinghy slides onto the beach front, Sarah gets out of the dinghy when a 300-400 pound female sow (Bertha) 
jumps into the dinghy with her two front feet, she grabs the plastic bag that is lying on the floor that has the apples in it with her long-sharp teeth and starts eating through the bag to get to the apples. Apple pieces are all over the front of the dinghy, on the floor, on the fuel tank, on the anchor. The pig is snorting looking at me and I’m asking it to leave (I wasn’t as polite as that might sound) I’m trying to push the pig out of the dinghy, I pop her in the snout a few times, she snaps at me a few times. I grab what is left of the bag with the apples and throw it into the water. Bertha jumps out finally to go after the bag. Sarah wants to pull the boat to shore and I say, no, I row into deeper water, too deep for Bertha to get back in the dinghy, Sarah walked around ‘Pig Island’ saying hello to baby pigs.
Luckily Bertha didn’t do any damage to the dinghy or puncture any of the tubes, but she was a lot of pork chops and bacon. Ah… roasted pork tenderloin… maybe I can work a trip to Pig Beach into a Meals from the Marsh recipe.
Before we left for Pig Island Sarah spotted a tree on another beach with lots of stuff hanging on it, so after our encounter the pigs we headed for the tree. It was at the other end of the anchorage and it took a while to get there. We saw 2 other dinghies on the beach, so I landed us between them. To our surprise one of the dinghy’s had a North Carolina registration placard on it. As I started to walk up on the beach you could see 2 couples sitting under a tree drinking adult beverages and listening to music. The stuff handing from the tree was from other cruisers, it is fairly common for a cruiser tree to spring up on any uninhabited beach. I asked them, ‘who is from North Carolina’, and an older woman says ‘we are’, I said ‘we are from NC too’, she says ‘where’? I say, ‘New Bern’. She laughs and says, ‘we are from Oriental, you know where that is don’t you?’ I said ‘sure, you guys all come to New Bern to shop’. A cruiser’s beach is where impromptu cruiser socializing happens and many cruisers will leave a memento that they were there. Of all the thing left behind, 2 were the most interesting. The first was a hand painted Florida State Seminole flag, you would think that someone from the University of Miami might want to make sure they are represented here. The second things of interest was a letter left behind by 2 French girls looking for a crewing opportunity, they were obviously at the cruiser beach before moving on the George Town. Many young people will volunteer to act as crew to get an opportunity to do this. Some spent there entire lives doing it.
Breakfast – [MJS] Ham and Swiss cheese omelet, Tea, [Sarah] 2 Fig Newtons, apple sauce, Tea, Lunch – [MJS & Sarah] nothing, Dinner – [MJS & Sarah] Penne, 5 cheese sauce, Mandurian oranges.