Sharks!! Highbourne Cay, Exumas,
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Wed 12 Dec 2012 17:42
| This is surely what cruising is all about! After a somewhat early, stressful and physically tiring start to the day we arrived in paradise! We got up at 6am to re-hoist our mainsail. if we were to get here in daylight, we had a deadline in that we had to leave no later than 10am. It was actually still dark when we woke up but by 6.45 we were on deck and had started on the sail. Just lifting and positioning that amount of sail cloth prior to hoisting is a huge job in itself, never mind getting it in the right place to go up the track inside the mast. After a few hiccups, the most serious being when we realised the line hoisting the sail would not easily run over the wheel at the top of the mast, we managed to hoist the sail. We had to wiggle the line a good few times to position it correctly so it didn't get stuck and rip apart which would have been disastrous. Once up, the last remaining challenge was to insert the five vertical battens which strengthen the sail. 3 hours later we were good to go, and we left the dock at exactly 10am - phew! The trip down to Highbourne Cay was a little stressful as we decided to take the short route - 40 miles across the Exuma Bank rather than 180 miles the long way round but in deep water. We had been advised that despite the charts showing very shallow water across the banks, we would, in fact, have no less than 10 feet all the way across - the mailboat goes that way regularly and that draws at least 10 feet. There was a period of about 40 minutes when we were down to less than a metre under the keel, but then it was all plain sailing and what a place to arrive - a beautiful anchorage, great sandy bottom fabulous for anchoring, a gorgeous sandy beach and palm trees, exactly what we had been looking forward to. After a well deserved glass of champagne on meeting up with our friends on Brizo again, we had a BBQ on the boat and retired early. One thing we noticed here is how dark it gets - there is no light clutter from the land at all at night, it is pitch black, and the sky is full of stars. Today we went exploring. The first place we went to was Allan's Cay, famous for the iguanas. As we arrived by dinghy, there was nothing to see, but as we got closer they started to appear out from the rock and very soon the beach was covered in them. Some were quite large and a bit scary! After a while we realised, as is often the case, that despite regular visits from tourists, they are more scared of us than we are of them, they scattered when we got too close. After a mooch round there we headed south towards Norman Cay for a lunch stop. On the way we popped into the local marina to check out the depth as Brizo may need fuel. The guys in the marina had been fishing and were cleaning their catch. At the base of the dock where they throwing the carcasses in there was a huge crowd of sharks - nurse sharks, lemon sharks and a ray or two as well - they threw the fish near the dinghies so we got a really good view of the sharks. Before we arrived Pat had said that swimming here was questionable due to the amount of sharks near the boat, the book says there are lots of generally harmless nurse and lemon sharks here, but the customs guys they had spoken to also mentioned sightings of mako sharks which can be very dangerous - we will probably stay out of the water for now! After this we headed down to Norman Cay, stopping off at the most amazingly beautiful bay any of us have ever seen, crystal clear water, white sandy spits, and not a cruise ship in sight - this is what the Bahamas is all about, we are all so glad we didn't listen to all the people who said the islands couldn't be done in a boat the size of ours, this one stop off made it all worth while. We loved the place so much we are staying another day - so much for the cruising plan!!! |