Lionfish and Sharks and Pigs, O my

Saturday the 11th we arrived back at one of our favorite spots, Staniel Cay!

And we just happened to walk in during a Lionfish competition.  Lionfish are small fish covered in poisonous barbs.  Because of this they have no natural predators and are over populated.  The Staniel Cay Divers sponsored an event to help fish them.  

Two teams caught over a hundred Lionfish that day with spears.  We arrived for the good part, the music and Lionfish cooking competition.

As people were gutting the Lionfish a bunch of sharks came to feast on the scraps.  They were circling all around the fish table and really big.  We have never seen so many sharks even at the Nassau Aquarium.

The band was an acoustic duo that played a lot of songs we liked so that was really cool.  For the cooking competition 5 chefs made 5 distinct dishes and everyone was given a plate to taste and vote.  There was a onion and pepper fish, jelly sauce fish, curry fish, teriayki fish, and our favorite and the winner, a sweet and sour fish.  Mmmmm they were all served over rice and delicious.  They were also selling Lionfish cookbooks and serving free drinks.  The winners of the competitions received over $3500 in total prizes.

Staniel Cay Divers sure know how to throw a party!

We fed our left over rice to these hungry fish.

As we mentioned before, our underwater camera never came into George Town.  So we bought a disposable underwater camera at Staniel Cay to take pictures of Thunderball Grotto.  We need to get them developed so we still can't post pictures of the amazing, fish filled cave.  We hope the pics turn out.

We left Staniel Cay Tuesday and stopped just around the corner at Big Majors, home of the pigs!

We noticed Thunderball Grotto and Big Majors were a lot more crowded this time with visitors, but this piggy must have slept through his last meal because he was hungry!

As soon as we got to the beach he came running out and would sit with his mouth open waiting for us to drop Graham Crackers in.

Then as we tried to feed the other pigs he got a little rude.  He would follow us and nudge his nose into us and  once he even bit me and then Christine!  It was just a nibble on the thigh with no teeth but it was still surprising.  Most the pigs were so well behaved.

Me in a stare down with fatty.

Our old friend baby piggy. 

Then as we were about to leave, the trouble maker thought we were holding out on him and tried to jump in our dinghy!  I had a cracker in my hand and had to yell for him a couple times before he got out, although we think he was stuck for a second.

We said goodbye to the pigs and continued north.

Our next few destinations were just beachy islands we decided to anchor at instead of skipping them.

We stopped at Thomas Cay which had an odd make shift hut that said "Pipe Creek Yacht Club"

From inside the "Yacht Club". There's our boat.

We found a few conch laced trails that led into the jungle island.

We crossed to the other side after a short safari.

Here's our boat from the top of the jungle with our kayaks landed on the beach to the left.

Next we kayaked over to Joe Cay!

It was a small cay that was mostly sand and had a few tiki huts in the middle.

Welcome to my island!

And Mrs. Joe

We then found out why it was so sandy with huts and a single dock in the middle.  It was private.  Kicked off our on Cay, shucks.

We kayaked back to the boat, kinda.  We actually got stuck in the strong channel current going out to sea but managed to land on the other side of Thomas Cay that we found earlier.  We then had to carry our kayaks through the safari and then kayaked back to the boat.  It was quite the work out for two lazy beach bums.

From Thomas Cay we anchored at Pipe Cay and then Belle Island near Cambridge Cay.  We attempted to anchor at Cambridge but the mooring balls took up most of the anchorage and we didn't know how to obtain a mooring.  (We later found out that there is a drop box on the beach that you just put $15 in for a mooring)

From Belle Island we slowly sailed to Warderick Wells Cay which is where the Exuma Land and Sea Park HQ is and Boo Boo Hill.  

This is where we currently are.  We hiked Boo Boo Hill again and saw our spray painted log with our name on it still there.  This time it was high tide and we had to cross a small 2 foot high stream.  Then we did a little snorkeling around Emerald Rock.

We went to the main office and after some thought coughed up the $35 for a mooring ball and one day of internet.  It had been 8 days since we had internet and we don't want anyone worrying out there :)

Next we will visit a few more Exuma Cays before hopping over to Eluethera by July 1st which is about when we should have internet again.

High Seas to Leaf Cay

We left George Town on Wednesday June 1st.  The weather was pretty windy but we never let that stop us before.  As we made it out of the harbor the waves got bigger and bigger and were crashing on us.  It just reminded us of some bad days on the Chesapeake so we kept going.

Soon the waves were over our head (i'd guess 10 feet) and the boat was pitching side to side hard.  We had everything inside tied off good so that was no worries but it still didn't feel good on the boat.  I would steer into the bigs waves slightly to prevent the harsh rocking.  Nomy began to cry as the waves crashed on deck and got us wet.

It started raining and Christine, who was reading her e-reader, got up to put it and our camera inside.  Just then a huge wave smacked us on the side and threw Christine to the lifelines.  The force of the jerk sent her e-reader flying out of her hand and into the deep blue sea.  It was a scary moment as I thought she was going over too, but luckily the netting and life lines kept her in.  Christine was very upset about losing her second e-reader, that we just got, as we both held on through the rest of the huge waves.

We made it back to Normans Cay, where we anchored on the way down, but took a left over to Leaf Cay this time.  After much debate we decided we would go back to George Town to get some more books since the e-reader was gone, have another under water camera shipped through dhl this time, and just hang around our town that we missed already.

The ocean had different plans.  The next day as we headed back to GT the waves were somehow bigger.  The narrow channel to enter the ocean had huge waves breaking right on our bow and the boat was shooting to the moon and then crashing down.  We made it through there but after about 5 miles of motoring the engine slowed and then died.  This wasn't a spot to be working on the engine down below as the boat was still pitching with each monster wave (they looked closer to 15 feet now), so we opened up the genoa (our front sail, our favorite sail) and kept moving along.  We couldn't aim south to George Town though because the wind was in our face so we turned around and headed back to Leaf Cay.

This actually turned out pretty nice.  Since we were now sailing about 6-7 knots with just the genoa up instead of motoring we felt more in tune with the waves.  We crashed into less of them and seemed to drift easily over them with the wind.  The scary part of sailing back through the narrow channel and to our anchorage turned out to be a piece of cake and soon we were spinning the boat into the wind to drop the genny and toss out the anchor where we had started a few hours before.

At anchor I found an oil leak and tightened it up and the engine came back alive.  But now we knew we didn't need that dumb engine. The winds are at our backs now heading north...

Friday we decided to rest and check out the Leaf Cay beach.  Back to island living!

We were greeted by the funny green and pink iguanas.  There were only four as opposed to the tons at Allens Cay and these guys were a little more brave.

They came right up to us and we found some near by fruit to feed them.  Soon they were eating a buffet out of our hands.

The beach itself was nice and we did some exploring to look for sea beans.

We wanted to circumnavigate the island but the winds were strong on the other side and it was raining too.  We cut through and then had to do rock hiking to get back to our boat

We found a small beach with the largest conch garden/graveyard we've ever seen.  These are all conch shells and there was more out of camera

At one point I wanted to walk through the water to get back to our dinghy but I'm glad we didn't because we saw a nurse shark swimming around.

This is the tiniest hermit crab we've found!

It's good to be back with nature

Nomy is more of a hotel cat.

The Exumas: Allen's Cay Iguanas and Boo Boo Hill

The Exumas are supposed to be the most scenic of all the Bahamas.  They are not disappointing!

Our first stop was Allen's Cay which has wild endangered iguanas.  As soon as we beached our dinghy they came out like zombies and surrounded us.  They looked pretty friendly though so we played with them for awhile.  You aren't supposed to feed them but we found a piece of fruit on the ground so we figured that was okay.  You could tell they were used to getting fed cuz they all came out and had fun eating the fruit we smashed up.  They even ate some out of Christines hand.

Our next stop was Normans Cay. They were supposed to have internet and cheese burgers which we were excited about.  Sadly their internet wasn't working and the cheeseburgers cost $18 each!  We don't have a fridge on board and can't catch fish or lobster so when everything you eat is out of a box or can, a burger is the world.  They were not worth $18 though and we left unsatisfied.  We explored some and then decided to move on.

I was able to dive down and see our anchor nice and snug

We took a short trip down to Shroud Cay where we heard a lot of good things about.  This Cay had more beautiful water and secluded beaches.  We inflated our kayaks for the first time and did some exploring by water.  We even saw our first shark!  It was about 2-3 feet long, maybe a reef shark or nurse shark?  It wasn't that scary since we were in our kayaks and I was hoping to see more.

We tried to kayak up a river we were told about that lead to a nice beach but the wind was in our face and it was low tide so we had to drag our kayaks across land, so we turned around.  Anyone else who tries this river should go at high tide.

The next day we continued south to Warderick Wells Cay.  Our goals were Boo Boo Hill and internet.  We were let down again when the park lady told us that the internet was only for mooring ball holders.  That would be $15 plus $10 for one day or 100mb of internet.  We had a lot to do online so we would each need our own account, so we passed on the $35 for one day of internet. We were getting nervous now though knowing that it had been 12 days since we talked to anyone and family worries.

A whale skeleton!

We did succede with our other goal of Boo Boo Hill though.  This infamous hill of the Bahamas used to be covered in water and was a shoal a long time ago.  An unlucky ship wrecked here and everyone died.  The legends of their ghost resulted in the name Boo Boo Hill.

Now a days all passing cruisers stop by to pay homage by writing their name on a piece of driftwood and adding it to the pile.

The view is also spectacular from the top and we could see our boat anchored.  It's too tiny to see but it's in this pic.

Some cruisers get real fancy with their name but all we had was a bottle of spray paint so we did our best. The four sides of this log say "SV" "Bright" "Eyes" "4/11"

Eager to continue on to Staniel Cay,  the George Town Regatta, and some internet, we left the next day.  Anything we miss now we can always visit on the return trip.

We are currently anchored in Staniel Cay next to the famous Thunderball Grotto!  We were lucky enough to get internet from our boat but at a price. $25 for three days, each.  Crazy but I guess thats supply and demand. Plus we get 750mb each instead of 100 per day.  Once we are done catching up with people and lame land life chores we will explore this wonderful island.  We plan to stay here until we move to George Town for the Regatta on April 18th!