The Duke Islands

Port Clinton was our next anchorage. Along with some 6 other yachts we were underway at sunrise, our particular destination being Marble Island, one of the Duke Group. In accordance with the ‘notice to mariners’ and the regular ‘securités’ I set our course to the Dukes outside the military zone. I was surprised, dare I say even shocked, to see that every other yacht completely ignored these regulations and cut straight through Pearl Bay! Marble Island was a comfortable but small anchorage. As you can see, the sunset was amazing. Because we wanted to reach MacKay the next day before sunset we planned on being up at 3:00am. I developed an attack of the terrors as we were about to leave because the night was inky black…no moon, no stars, a heavy cloud cover and no visible landmarks. Usually I helm until we are underway but this time Peter, who is offended that I consider his night vision to be not much better than mine, helmed. He was briefly disorientated as we got underway, but with the help of our new chart plotter was able to re-group quite quickly and we were soon looking forward to night becoming day.