Dear Exuma Cays: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Farewell, beautiful waters of the Exumas

It's been a while.  Internet in the northern Exumas is hard to find, and expensive when found.  Last time I updated, we were in Black Point. 

We stayed in Black Point just one night.  Long enough to do laundry, get some groceries (and ice!), and have a cheeseburger.  The next morning, we moved on up to Big Majors Spot, just outside of Staniel Cay.  Last time we were there, it was insanely crowded.  Sailboats, trawlers, motorboat, and megayachts.  Dinghies, runabouts, and tenders (think really big dinghies) roared by at all hours, kicking up a wake and making us nervous for our anchor line.  That's when we started employing the kellet to keep our anchor line down and out of danger.  That was last time.  This time was so much better!  Way fewer boats, no tenders, and plenty of room to anchor.  It was pretty sweet.  And Amata Marie was already there, so we had company.

Since it was less crowded, we decided to try spearfishing around some rocky islands on the north side of the anchorage.  There were just a few coral heads, but we fished them to our little hearts' content.  Jim and Tim from Amata Marie came with us on the hunt.  We managed to get 2 or 3 bluestriped grunts, a Nassau grouper, and a lionfish (guess who got that one).  Jim also found a little bitty lion fish.  He wasn't too concerned about spearing it because it wasn't big enough to eat.  I have no such qualms when it comes to those guys.  I speared it and wiped it on a rock for the birds to eat.  That brought me up to 5 lion fish.  We cleaned up and dinghied over to Amata Marie, where Tim showed me the proper way to clean a fish.  Yay for finally learning how to clean a fish!

On May 27, we moved up to Warderick Wells.  We didn't want to fight the crazy currents around the main mooring field (or pay for a mooring ball), so we anchored around the Emerald Rock area to the west of the island.  The next morning we headed in to shore, taking advantage of the end of an outgoing current.  We hiked up to the top of Boo Boo Hill.  This is a place where cruisers can leave their mark, or at least a piece of driftwood with their name on it.  It's an impressive pile of boards commemorating all the boats that have passed through.

Boat boards on Boo Boo Hill

We made a board, too.  But there's a story behind the wood itself.  When we left Chattanooga, we had this little rectangle of plywood, just a scrap we'd used to catch drippings of glue, paint, silicone, whatever was dripping from any project at any given time.  It sat on top of the cabin, just because we forgot to throw it away before we left.  It stayed all the way down the rivers, through Mobile Bay, across the Gulf of Mexico, through the Keys, across the Gulf Stream, over the Great Bahama Banks.  It wasn't glued or fastened down; it just stayed there.  We thought it was our lucky board.  But then I thought about all the rotten weather we'd had with that board up there.  Maybe it was an unlucky board.  While we were in the Berry Islands, Trevor cleaned it up and sanded it down, thinking we'd paint something on it to change its luck.  We didn't get around to it until we started thinking about a board for Boo Boo Hill.  We used our lucky/unlucky board to leave our mark in the Exumas.  It seemed appropriate to leave something there that had traveled with us since the beginning.  It's nothing fancy, but it's us.

Trevor and me and our sign atop Boo Boo Hill

Earendil's sign on Boo Boo Hill

That afternoon, Amata Marie joined us, as well as Juno.  We took the dinghy out to the Malabar Cays to do some snorkeling.  I've never seen so many conch!  Big ones, too!  We were in the Land and Sea Park, so we couldn't take any.  We also saw some good-sized fish, including some huge mutton snapper and a dozen or so barracuda (creepy buggers followed us around).  I think the fish (and conch) know they're in a safe place and never leave.  We came back in and snorkeled on some of the coral heads around Emerald Rock.  Pretty nice, with colorful coral and lots of fish.  But no lion fish, fortunately. 
The next morning, we headed up to Shroud Cay, at the north end of the park.  We skipped it on the way down, but we were told it's a must-see with creeks going all the way through the island.  So we grabbed a mooring ball and took the dinghy across the northernmost creek.  It was indeed pretty cool.  It's odd to see blue water in the middle of an island.  But the creeks run from the Sound side to the Banks side, flowing with the tides.  We battled an incoming tide until we got to the other side. 

East end of the creek on Shroud Cay

Once we got to the other side, there was a crowd of people, so we just turned around.  There's supposed to be a really nice beach there, but we've seen beaches.  Didn't want to play bumper boats.  We also wanted to get up to Norman's Cay that afternoon.  The trip back was considerably faster since we had the current going with us.  We got back on the boat and headed north. 

And then the wind shifted.  We'd had a great day with good breezes and small waves.  But suddenly we were fighting into a chop.  Where did this come from?  And the southern end of Norman's Cay has quite a few coral heads to dodge, and they were tricky to spot in the rough seas.  But we managed to make our way through and anchored really close to shore (hooray for shoal draft!).  It was a little rolly, but considerably better than the choppiness of the last hour.  We also had a seagull following us, occasionally trying to land on the dinghy for a ride.  Once we anchored, the water was calm enough for it to land and rest a spell. 

Trying to land on our light

Petey (Trevor named it) taking a rest

We were anchored near some coral heads, so the next day we tried some spearfishing.  We saw lots of fish, but couldn't get close enough to spear any.  A few hours later, I took the dinghy and tried fishing like a normal person (hook and line).  With hot dogs as my bait, I caught a good-sized French grunt.  I caught a tiny grunt and then noticed a barracuda lurking.  I put on a bigger hook and used the little grunt as bait.  The barracuda just yanked the thing right off the hook.  I caught another little grunt and tried again, this time putting it on the hook more securely.  I tossed the fish right in front of the barracuda, and he nabbed it!  Hooked pretty strongly, he fought with a vengeance, but I held on.  Then the wire lead let go.  Alas, no barracuda for dinner.  He was probably too big to eat anyway.  When I caught another tiny grunt, I cut it up to use as bait for more catchable fare.  Though I had seen a ton of snapper when we were snorkeling, they were nowhere to be found when I was fishing.  I did manage to catch another French grunt and a bluestriped grunt.  And three makes dinner, so I went home and cleaned them.  (It went much better now that I knew what I was doing.)  Fried grunt makes an excellent dinner.

The next day, we headed up to Highborne Cay just after Amata Marie.  Juno stayed behind until the next day.  After dodging coral heads, we headed a couple of miles offshore to skirt around a rocky bar before we turned back in toward Highborne.  It was rough out there!  Choppy and splashy and not fun.  Trevor and I agreed the conditions were like the first time we tried to cross from Bimini to the Berrys (we turned around that time because it was too rough).  Since we only had a few miles to go, we toughed it out and were very happy to drop an anchor next to Highborne Cay.  This was where we first landed in the Exumas a month and a half earlier. 

The next day (Wednesday, June 1 - the first official day of hurricane season), Trevor took a couple of dinghy trips in to the marina for fuel and water.  Toward the end of the day, we snorkeled over a nearby coral head.  Trevor spotted a lion fish, which I was determined to kill, so he went back and got the spear for me.  It took me a few tries (I'm not very good aim with a spear, really), but I finally got it.  Now I'm up to 6 lion fish killed!  It was a bleeder, so we took it back to the boat immediately.  Before we headed back to the coral head, a nurse shark showed up.  I think it smelled the blood in the water and came to check for snacks.  Even though nurse sharks are the most non-threatening of sharks, I didn't want to continue spearfishing with it hanging around.  So we called it a day.  The fish was too small to eat, but I cut it up for bait.  Juno showed up that day.  We thought we would be traveling to Eleuthera with them, but we've decided to take a more direct route home.  The wind was going to be blowing out of the northeast for a while, so we would have been stuck in Highborne until it changed.  And with some potentially big stuff brewing down south, we've decided to get back to the States before the weather gets bad. 

Thursday morning, we were up early to listen to the weather.  It would be our last chance for half a week or so to get out of the Exumas.  We put a reef in the main sail (something we'd never done before) to reduce sail area since it was forecast to be pretty windy.  Less sail means less fighting if the wind blows hard.  We also took off the big rainbow genoa and put on the smaller jib.  We were ready.  We left around 7:30.  So long, Exumas, it's been grand!  The first few hours were pretty rough.  The waves were coming at us from the side, and occasionally they would knock us around.  Mostly it was just a rough ride.  As the day went on, we were able to put the waves more behind us, which made it a much easier ride.  Trevor fished most of the day, trolling a lure behind on the yo-yo (Cuban hand reel). 
Around 1:00, it was time to turn off the engine and check the oil.  Naturally, while Trevor was below doing other things, the yo-yo jumped, indicating a fish was on the line.  Then the line started unrolling.  "Trevor, I think you have a fish."
"I have a fish?"  He looked and saw the line going out.  "I have a fish!"  He jumped into the cockpit and excitedly reeled in his fish.  It was a fighter.  Turned out to be a good-sized yellowtail snapper.  I've been wanting to eat one of these since we got to the Bahamas, so I was just about as excited as he was.

Trevor super excited about his catch. And what a beauty it was!

The good fishing continued the rest of the day.  He caught a big barracuda.  It was too big to eat, but he had to douse it with tequila to subdue it enough to take the hook out.  Then he caught a smaller barracuda, but it was at the upper end of the edible size range, so we tossed that one back, too. 

The smaller barracuda.  Look at those teeth!

As we got closer to New Providence Island, the water got a little smoother.  At one point, I ran right through a bunch or coral heads, dodging in between them.  The yo-yo jumped big time!  I was afraid we'd caught a coral head with the hook, but Trevor pulled on the line and said it was fighting.  A big fish!  He pulled and pulled on the line, slowly bringing in this fish.  I looked at the GPS, and the fish was slowing us down a little.  Whoa.  It broke the surface a few times, but we couldn't tell what it was, just that it was bigger than the other fish he'd caught.  Finally, he brought it into the boat, and look how much of our cockpit floor it took up!

Trevor's big catch in the cockpit.

We radioed Amata Marie to let them know dinner was on us that night.  When we described the fish to him, Jim told us it was a mutton snapper.  Good eating.  Both boats were pretty psyched about that night's dinner.  We were also psyched about getting out of the waves and into a harbor!
With that fish, Trevor and I decided we were done fishing.  As we neared blue water, a couple of dolphins played around under our boat.  Only the second time we've seen porpoises in the Bahamas.  As we got close to the entrance into West Bay, a dive boat was on the mooring ball that was right in our way.  So we went around behind him and tried to find the entrance.  The wind had picked up wildly by this point, and the water was rough.  There were also clouds sporadically overhead, so it was very hard to see the way in.  To make it worse, we were heading straight into the wind.  So Trevor went up front to take down the jib while I tried to find the space between the coral heads and the shallows.  I managed to make my way in to the right cut and dodged another coral head as Trevor took down the main sail.  Amata Marie followed us in, and it was a little harrowing for them, too. 
But we all made it in okay and were very happy to anchor.  Once we made it far enough into the bay, the water calmed considerably.  Trevor and I snuggled up close to shore.  When the depth finder read 3', we dropped the anchor in a sandy spot.  (Our depth finder reads about a foot and a half less than actual depth.)  We drifted back to where we had about 5 or so feet under us.  Nice.  And the water that close to the beach was smooth.  Ah, that's more like it.
Then we loaded up the fish (and rum and Kool-Aid - our new favorite drink) and headed over to Amata Marie for dinner.  Tim was nice enough to clean the fish for us.  He's a pro at that sort of thing.  With the 29-inch and approximately 12-pound mutton snapper, I was way out of my league.  Tim managed to get 10 steaks out of the fish.  10 steaks!  And these were not little steaks either.  Add 2 fillets from the yellowtail, and we had more fish than Trevor and I could handle!  The 5 of us ate half of the big fish for dinner that night, and the rest went into Jim & Nancy's freezer.  Our ice would never hold out long enough for us to eat that much fish.  They've always been very generous sharing their fish with us, and it was nice to finally return the favor for once.  What a day!

Yesterday, Jim shuttled the rest of us to shore so we could go shopping.  We didn't realize how far it was to civilization.  There are houses all around us, but there's a big, spiky fence along the road for miles.  So we walked and walked.  We found a convenience store a couple of miles down, where we were happy to have a quick refreshment before walking the rest of the way to the grocery store.  And then we shopped!  The prices were almost like US prices!  We stocked up on fruits, veggies, junk food, and Kool-Aid.  All the essentials of cruising.  :)  We got a ride back to the beach, and Jim shuttled us back out to the boats.  Last night, I made West Bay Stew for dinner.  It was a soup I made last time we were here, and I happened to have the ingredients again.  Smoked sausage, an onion, a can of tomatoes, a can of corn, and a pack of onion soup mix.  It was tasty this time, too!
Today, Trevor scrubbed the bottom of the boat.  Now we're going to be so fast!  I sat around and read.  Tough life.  We'll be heading out of here Monday or Tuesday to get to the Berry Islands.  From there, we'll cross the banks again back to Bimini.  Should be a better trip across than last time.  And then, we'll cross the Gulf Stream and get back to the States.  It's weird to think we could be back stateside by this time next week.  We'll just have to see what the weather does.
And here's a picture of Trevor with his awesome catch!

Trevor and his prize mutton snapper.