Going across the Banks

On Monday late morning we made our way around the dredge that occupies most of the deep water in the channel and carefully inched along the beach to open water. After sailing north to aptly named North Rock we headed east onto the Great Bahama Bank and motored over clear, shallow water. It took a bit of getting used to but the chart says there is nothing out there that our boat will hit. The water was mostly 10 to 15 feet deep so our 5.5 foot draft was really no problem. At 5:30 we were 15 miles from Bimini and we moved a mile or so off of the main path (everyone follows the same waypoints) and anchored for the night. It was odd anchoring with no land in sight. The sand on the Bank is not very deep and has a smooth rock surface under it. Anchors tend to bite into the sand for a while and then drag over the rock for a bit. The numbers on the GPS kept changing since we were slowly moving down wind. Everyone said this is normal and since there is nothing to hit, we let it drag all night. Crossroads actually moved less than a quarter of a mile while we slept so it would have taken a week to move far enough to hit something. [N25d47:06, W78d59:03]
Three A.M. came early after a rocking horse ride all night as the boat pitched up and down in the waves. We were anchor up and engine on by 3:30 and motoring into the wind bound for the Northwest Channel (on the southeast end of the Bank). You may have noticed that for a sailboat we do a lot of motoring. The wind here seems to be either too strong to leave port or too light to sail, but it always blows from the direction we are going. I would rather motor in a calm than get beat up in a blow. So motor we did, for 14 hours, dull, dull, dull.