28:37.24N 80:48.56W

Photos from top to bottom: A swimming pigs coming to say hello. ● The nurse shark in Warderick Well’s Cay. ● The beautiful bay of Warderick Well’s Cay.

Hello! Welcome to the second blog on our journey through the Bahamas. We are currently in Cape Canaveral, Florida which is our first stop in the USA. Although it’s exciting to be in the US, I definitely miss those tiny islands and sandy beaches that made up the Bahamas. The last blog left off at Staniel’s Cay where our guests, Bob and Barbra, left us. It was very sad to see them go because they’d been good company. After they’d gone, we decided to stay in Staniel’s Cay a few more days to see the sights.

One of Staniel’s Cay’s most famous attractions is Thunderball Grotto, so named because these semi-underwater caves were used in the James Bond film… Goldfinger! Kidding, I’m pretty sure you know which movie it is. To get in you had to snorkel through a tunnel which then opened out into a massive cavern. I had a lot of fun pretending I was 007 especially when we exited the grotto via an underwater cave. But it is very hard to do his catchphrase when you’ve got a mouthful of water.

Probably (check that, definitely) my favourite sight in Staniel’s Cay is the swimming pigs of Big Major’s Spot Bay. At the moment you might be thinking “Swimming pigs? Is this a typo?” But I am very serious. In Big Major’s Spot there are pigs that will swim out to your boat and look very cute in return for a vegetable or two. Because we were staying in the bay next door we took the dinghy (and a bag of carrots) over to Big Major’s Spot. When we arrived, the pigs were lazing around on the beach and we were rather afraid that they wouldn’t swim out today. Luckily they sensed an opportunity of getting free food when I chucked a carrot at them. They trotted to the water and paddled out to our dinghy where we fed them carrots (or rather chucked carrots at them, they have been known to bite people) while they posed for the camera. I was rather surprised that they weren’t included in Thunderball, they might have made some interesting spies. But then the film would probably have had to been renamed. Live and Let Oink, perhaps? Or From Russia with Carrots?

After visiting the attractions that this island had to offer, we didn’t want to stay much longer in Staniel’s Cay but bad weather kept us there for a couple more days. Once there was even thunder and lightning while Robyn and I did maths! As if the sums weren’t bad enough on their own. Luckily when it cleared we were able to move on the Warderick Well’s Cay.

Warderick Well’s has to be one of my favourite anchorages in the Caribbean. It was a nature reserve so that meant no litter, no fishing and, best of all, no jet skis! Think of jet skis as that car that goes whizzing past you at 60mph in a 30mph road. Warderick Well’s Cay also had amazing wildlife. Once a 2-metre-long nurse shark came right up to Silhouette and stayed swimming around there for a while. He probably knew he was being treated like a VIP.

Warderick Well’s Cay was also very interesting on land. There were lots of trails, including Boo Boo Hill that gets its name from the noise that the drowned sailors make who are said to haunt it on full moon. Apart from ghosts there are other things on top of the hill: sailors leave driftwood with their boat’s names on as an offering to spirits of good weather. We added our own to the pile of name plates on the hill and it worked! The next day, when there was supposed to be thunder and lightning, we got sun all day.

We even got the chance to make friends at Warderick Well’s. Mum and Dad met lots of people when going to the ‘bring your own’ happy hour on Skeleton Beach. Robyn and I made friends with Anne and Alex, two American siblings, who we met in our last couple of days in Warderick Well’s Cay.

But the USA calls! As we are meeting friends in Cape Canaveral we had to speed up our journey through the Bahamas. We only spent one day in our next stop of Shroud Cay but stopped a bit longer in West Bay, New Providence. Although we didn’t do much in West Bay, one thing I will always remember is getting a lift from the police to the supermarket! At first when they pulled up to offer us a ride I was rather worried they were going to arrest us. Luckily, that wasn’t the case.

And then, two days later, we set sail for the USA! It was a two night sail and a very peaceful one too. We passed by lots of cruise and containers ships before finally arriving in Florida. We are currently in Titusville Marina and will be staying there for a couple of days before our friends arrive. But before that, we will be doing a little sightseeing, including visiting Universal Studios. We’ve a lot to look forward to!

Kerry