pipe creek

Ananda
Ron Welch
Wed 30 Mar 2011 14:41
Latitude 24:10.98N, longitude76:26.89W
March 26, 2011
Pipe Creek was one of those surreal "turquoise, aquamarine, azure, cobalt hazes"......lots of underwater landscape changes.....deep narrow channels with strong currents surrounded by various expanses of shallow waters....and only two other boats......no wind....crystal clear water....still......peaceful.......calm..........Roger stayed on board and relaxed after a little bit more work and fabrication on "frank Furno" as we fondly refer to the auto pilot as while Ron and I took a dingy ride to the long white beach that ran the length of this safe haven between three Cays......"stop!....stop here......they might puncture the bottom of the dingy"...(our sweet orange and green stripped "Caribbean zebra" dingy is soft bottom so we can deflate and fold it on deck for long open water passages)....there were Conch shells.......live conch cluttering the water line at the shore........lots and lots of them....I carefully picked them up one by one and cleared a path to beach the dingy....and by the time we had walked down the beach and back as the sunset......another forced exodus was necessary for us to get back out.......returning to Ananda we had seen the anchor though the clear water and knew it was "in" securely.......holding well, but with the strong current in a narrow deep channel it made for a noisy night in the forward berth listening to the "song of chain and snubber tugging and rubbing on the bow of the boat"......after a run into the marina at Compass to see the "pet sharks".......what marine life have we heard more about and seen more of over this visit to the Bahamas? ......yes sharks.....quite surprising how many of these fear evoking predators are being fed with the chum from the days catch at marinas......the very industry that is scorned for their role in the decrease and unfortunately actual extinction of some types of these beasts.....is also " taming" and feeding them at most of the marinas we visit..... compass cay marina.... is actually a private island, as are many of the cays in the exuma chain, this one is owned by a Eco-friendly local fellow called Tucker.....he has recycling bins set up for dividing your garbage into.......this is extremely surprising considering how difficult it is to dispose of garbage in the islands.......how far does he have to get to a glass recyclery?......perhaps he burns it all himself......i don't know as our visit to Compass Cay was only to the marina....it seemed like a place only lightly touched by humans, and only on the edges....I would have enjoyed spending more time exploring there, but Staniel Cay was our designated safe haven for the night....so we were off........off on the "out side".....in the sound.....the Atlantic side of the islands that is...too shallow to make the trip on the inside....even for Ananda with near 4.5 draft.......another motoring trip.....too little wind to put up the sails...