Leaving Government Cut the skyline of Miami begins to shrink
in the distance.
This bird rode for with us for a while in the Gulf
Stream. We could almost touch her. I think she is a Northern Parula, a kind of
warbler. I hope she got home.
This building with the interesting roofline is Momma and
Papa T’s Beach Club on Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands. The door was open, and the beer was cold.
Bill is prowling about looking for conch in the shallow
grass flats at Normans Cay. The ditched drug
running aircraft we snorkeled on during our first trip here is underwater near
the top left of the picture.
We kept and cleaned two of the conch he found. Bill is holding one shell and one
corpse. The other is on our stern seat
which doubles as a fish cleaning table. These
huge snails just drip slime.
Beaches, beaches, beaches.
That is what these trips are about.
These are the sand flats just north of Hawksbill Cay at nearly low
tide. Ten football fields would not
begin to cover them.
This second beach picture is at Shroud Cay. Use Google Maps and search for spot where we
anchored, 24°32.882'N 076°47.479'W , zoom in, choose satellite view, and go
northeast to find the beach on the east side of the island.
A big Bahamian hello to you all. It has been quite a while since I last posted
an entry. We have been without internet
for the last two weeks.
When I last wrote we were anchored off Miami’s South Beach. We had a plan for traveling to the Bahamas. We would sail from No Name Harbour on Key
Biscayne leaving for Bimini at 3 or 4 in the morning. In order to do that, we would have to move
the boat from South Beach to No Name. But,
before we could do that we needed to do the laundry, fill the boat’s water and
fuel tanks, buy the last of the beer and Diet Cokes that would fit in the
quarter berth, shop for groceries, get some gin… you know, the usual departure
list. It would be a busy but doable
day. I did our laundry early in the
morning of April 1st while Bill got the water, gin, and fuel. The laundry was finished before Bill went to
get the last jug of fuel. I still needed
to get the groceries, so Bill dropped me off at the dinghy landing spot to walk
to the Publix grocery store. He took my
clean laundry back to Irish Eyes and picked up the empty fuel jug. Bill got the fuel, took it to the boat, and
was coming to get me at Publix when our plans fell apart.
Some of you have probably heard Bill say “Want to make God
laugh? Just make a plan”. Well, while I was in the grocery store and
Bill was riding in the dinghy, the previously beautiful sunny skies clouded
over and a huge thunderstorm developed with lightning and drenching rain. Bill was trapped in the dinghy under a
bridge, mostly dry but being slowly dripped on.
I was outside Publix waiting on him.
I talked to a nice guy, who had jogged to the grocery store and was
afraid to jog back in the rain for fear of getting his cell phone wet and to an
older gentleman, who did not like to drive in the rain. The jogger was from Raleigh originally, and
the older gentleman was interested in how we lived on a sailboat. The bench was dry and the company
entertaining. Poor Captain Bill; he got
soaked. By the time Bill made it to
Publix it was 2pm. It was still raining,
thundering, lightening and the wind was blowing hard. We ate our very late lunch at the Publix
deli, waited around some more and finally gave up and walked and dinghied in
the rain back to Irish Eyes.
We were both soaked and cold, but a hot rum toddy (or two)
quickly warmed us up and restored our spirits.
It was after 4pm by this time and still storming, so the trip to No Name
Harbor was cancelled and our plans were ruined. We were worried about when we would be able to
leave Florida. The next day, Tuesday,
was just about the only good weather day to cross the Gulf Stream and the day
after, Wednesday, was the only good one to proceed farther south in the
Bahamas. If we left a day late, on
Wednesday, we could make it to Bimini, but the approaching cold front would
catch us there, and we would be stuck. What
to do, what to do? I made a suggestion
that we could leave the next morning from Miami, sail overnight and arrive at
Great Harbor Cay in the Berry Islands early on Thursday beating the cold front. Captain Bill was dubious. We went to bed without making a decision.
After a night’s sleep, Bill decided my idea was his idea. We pulled the dinghy out of the water and
pulled up our anchor around 10am. There
were not any cruise ships in the Miami harbor, so we breezed out Government Cut
and left Miami behind.
The wind was light, and we were motor sailing, enjoying the
indigo water in the Gulf Stream and the sunshine. We were several miles out to sea when a little
grey and yellow bird appeared in the cockpit. It was not afraid of us at all, even landing
on the bird book I was using to identify it.
Bill gave it a section of a tangerine which the bird pecked at for a
bit. It stayed with us for about an hour
and then flew away. I decided it was
migrating and just needed a rest and a little snack.
Our overnight trip was uneventful. When the sun came up we could see the
beautiful blue water of the Bahamas. We
arrived at the Great Harbor Marina about lunch time. The customs and immigrations officer came to
the marina. We did not have to go to him. The strong cold front was still coming our
way, so we stayed in the marina for three days.
There were about half a dozen boats there either just arriving in the
Bahamas or headed back home. We enjoyed
meeting several couples over food at the marina, and one night we walked into
Bullocks Harbour and had our first conch dinner of the trip at Coolie Mae’s
wonderful restaurant.
The cold front finally came through on Friday with wind and
rain. It was gone by Saturday morning,
so we left Great Harbour Cay headed north to the top of the Berry Islands then
south on their east side to Little Harbour Cay.
The trip around the north end of the island put us in the Northwest
Channel which was anything but smooth. The
waves were huge. We had to go around two
cruise ships anchored off their prettified private islands. I do not know why cruise lines do not use the
local businesses; it seems so wrong to build a fake Bahamas when the real one
is right there. We made it to our
anchorage off Little Harbour Cay where there was not a thing in sight but sand
and water.
The next leg of the trip took us to West Bay on New
Providence Island. Coming out of Little
Harbour was terrifying. We had the tide
going out and the wind blowing in, that meant monstrous waves. The bow of Irish Eyes would point at the sky one
moment and at the center of the earth the next.
It felt like we were not moving.
Finally, we made it out and sailed southeast toward New Providence
Island and Nassau in much more sedate (?) 4 and 6 foot waves. A few hours later we were anchored in the calm waters of West Bay
several miles from Nassau enjoying the faint Reggae music from the two bars on
shore.
In the morning after the sun rose high enough to see the
coral heads in our path, we left West Bay and motored upwind to Highborne
Cay. It was a long day, but we made up
for it by staying at Highborne for three days.
After lounging about like snails the whole first day, we were finally
rested enough from our labors to launch the dinghy and do some beach walking.
On these trips to the Bahamas we are slaves to the weather. We basically live outside, and the weather
controls everything. On our third day at
Highborne Cay the wind changed in direction a bit, waves entered our anchorage,
and the boat began to roll, so we moved a whopping 6 miles to Normans Cay and
anchored off the west side beach. We
dinghied around the south end of Normans to the sand flats on the east side of
the island. The scenery was
spectacular. Bill decided he wanted to
go conching. Conching is not hard, the
conchs put up no resistance, they don’t move fast, you can easily catch them (You
just lean over and pick it up.), but finding them is another story. Bill found five conchs. (I found lots of shells.) We kept the two largest conchs. Bill did a good job getting the slimy things
out of their shells, and I did an okay job of cooking them. Other than to have had the experience, I think
I will continue to have my conch in a restaurant.
It was time to move on, and we made another “long” trip of
about six miles to Shroud Cay. Shroud is
in the Exuma Land and Sea Park. The
island is an uninhabited ring of rock with mangrove swamps and sand flats in
the middle and with beaches scattered around the outside. There are several creeks that pass through
the island winding their way through the mangroves and past the sand flats to
beaches at each end. We spent six days
touring the creeks, snorkeling on offshore coral heads, and beach walking. Bill got water from a well that is almost at
the highest spot on the island, and he dug up nearly a hundred pounds of scrap
iron from below the sand on one beach. No
gold, just iron. It was great.
This year we do not have a schedule to keep, so we are
moving slowly down the Exuma island chain. Hawskbill Cay was our next port-of-call; another
six mile trip. Like Shroud Cay there is
not a thing there but water and sand. Bill
and I took several dinghy trips around to the north side of the island to
explore the caves, sand flats, and beaches. We had a rainy day on Monday April 22. It gave Bill a chance to use his fancy-dancy rainwater
collecting system. We topped off our
tanks and put another 25 gallons of fresh water in jugs. Several boats came and went while we were at
Hawksbill, but a large motor yacht was there when we got there and was still there
when we left. Someone on that boat apparently
had a birthday on our last day. They had
a party on the beach complete with balloons, a bonfire, dinner ashore, and fireworks. While we did not receive invitations to the
party, we did enjoy the fireworks.
We left Hawksbill Cay on Wednesday, April 24 sailed for the Emerald
Rock mooring field at Warderick Wells Cay; the Exuma Land and Sea Park
Headquarters. The wind was strong from
the northeast, and we were headed south, so it was an exhilarating sail. The fifteen mile trip only took us just three
hours!
One of the nice things about the Park Headquarters is
wifi. We will spend a couple of days
here catching up on our email, internet banking, and web surfing, finding our
sign on Boo Boo Hill, and enjoying the beaches and trails.
Hope you are all as well and happy as we.
