Much has happened in the last five days:
1. Got the mobile comms sorted and replenished fresh food stocks in Georgetown - no more Smash or corned beef for a while.
2. Experienced perfect sailing day en route from Georgetown to Black Point, about half-way up the Exuma chain of cays (small islands or islets, pronounced ‘keys’). ‘Perfect’ constitutes smooth water, force 3-4 winds, sunshine and blue skies.
View from the forward cabin
3. Saw a lionfish whilst snorkelling in Black Point Bay. Lionfish are edible, venomous invaders, which are voracious eaters of game fish, crustaceans and perhaps even coral. Apparently in only five weeks, lionfish can reduce the number of young native fish on a reef by as much as 80%. It was quite a sight - beautiful but somewhat threatening. You can google to see what they look like but I have no underwater camera so can't supply photo I'm afraid! The Bahamian marine authority asks for any sightings to be reported, which I will duly do.
4. Swam inside Thunderball Grotto of 007 fame but the movie cameras and their attendants have moved on. Regrettably no nice youthful Sean Connery either. It's an amazing, magical place, full of colourful fish of all shapes and sizes. The sunlight shines in through four holes in the roof of the cavern. It is located under a small rocky cay, close to the well known Staniel Cay; you have to swim under a low lip of limestone to get in but once in, it opens out into a cavern which is smaller than we expected from the film… must now watch the movie again just to catch sight of the grotto!
5. Witnessed swimming pigs - living on the beach at the aptly named Big Majors Spot, off which we anchored. Yes they really do swim! And people come in their boats from far and wide to see them and feed them.
6. Nurse sharks visited Follyfin on Friday evening
And to think that I had been swimming in these self-same waters a short while earlier… but expect the zoologists amongst my readers will advise that nurse sharks are harmless. Nevertheless it was very exciting for us! They must have been attracted by the fishy water and the last of the mahi-mahi remains that were flushed out from the boat a little while earlier. And shortly afterwards two or three black sting rays came swimming round the boat too, but the light was not good enough to photograph them.
So you see, a memorable few days for us. Yesterday, Saturday 13 May, I would prefer to forget, however, in contrast to the perfect sailing day referred to above. Alarm went off at 04:35, weighed anchor at 05:40 and basically neither of us had any ‘off watch’ time until after we dropped anchor at 19:40 at our destination on Eleuthera. The wind just couldn't make up its mind: was it going to blow strong or weak or a bit of both? Was it going to blow from the east or south-east, both forecast in different places, or was it going to veer south and even south-west for a bit? All this meant we could never settle down and enjoy the sailing because we were constantly having to change the sail plan. All made worse by the knowledge that we had to keep the speed up as we needed to cover the 65 nm passage by sunset! Well we just made it but Skipper and I agreed that this sort of hurried passage-making is more of an endurance test than we would like.
But now we are here in Rock Sound on the island of Eleuthera.
It has the Ocean Hole,
And nine churches (see the Anglican one above), of which we spotted three in our short walk round the town. Not sure where the congregations come from though, as the town here barely looks large enough to support one church, let alone nine.
From here we will aim to get up to the Abacos by the end of the coming week, wind and weather permitting. It's a long way and will involve at least one night on passage. But at least we will then be in position for the long 500 nm ‘hop’ up to the north-east US coast.
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