I was up early and waiting outside the Immigration office on Boxing Day. We would have preferred to leave around two in the morning so we could arrive in the Caymans before nightfall of the second day, but we needed our clearance papers from Honduras before we could go. Fortunately he showed up relatively early, at 8:20. Checking out was about as easy as can be. Five bucks a person, a couple of passport stamps, and with papers in hand we were off for the Cayman Islands.

This is why we wished we could have left a few hours earlier. Conditions were perfect for our boat.

This Brown Booby joined us for quite a while. He would fly right alongside of us watching the water in front of the boat. When the flying fish would scatter out in front of us he would take off like a dart, dive into the water, bob back up eating or not eating, then lift up and come right back alongside of us again. It’s these small entertainments that help break the monotony of long days at sea.

Sun going down, and kids with energy to burn, still.

The night passed uneventfully. Winds, thankfully, did what had been predicted, hovering around 7 knots on the nose all night. I was happy once again for the trawler. These would have been crap conditions for a sailboat—light wind on the nose and just enough lump in the seas to keep the boat off-balance. The Grand Banks powers right through those lumps like they aren’t even there.

Hallelujah, there are still dolphins in the Caribbean. You really start to wonder after a while. Towards the end of the second day we suddenly saw them coming from a mile away, jumping and racing to get to us so they could play in the bow wake.

We arrived in Grand Cayman in the middle of the night. George Town is lit up pretty well, so it wasn’t difficult to ease our way in and find one of the big orange moorings they’ve got set up for us. 350 miles, 40 hours, no issues. I was happy to put this passage behind us. Not because it was particularly long, but because it was dead on to the prevailing winds. This is the sort of passage we could easily have had to wait a month or two to get a decent weather window. This perfect one just fell in our lap.

In the morning we called up Port Security who sent a boat out to escort us in to the dock. We thought they’d brought us in so they could board the boat, but they didn’t even bother. Filled out our Cayman Island immigration and customs forms in their little office, and we were set free to roam, for free, for thirty days.

We spent a quiet day walking the streets, eating at cruise ship tourist prices, and heading home early for bed.