Peter Island - Marina Cay Island

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Mon 9 Apr 2012 19:16

18:27.60N 64:31.80W

 

Sat, Sun & part of Monday – 7th, 8th and 9th April.

In the morning Rob and Steve went off to the Caves for another snorkel.   The pilot advises going in the afternoon for the better light into the caves, but we have found it is a whole lot nicer to go when there is no one else around, nobody stupidly feeding the fish as requested not to, and no idiot in a motoring dinghy who believes he is exempt from mooring to the provided line and that he alone is allowed to patrol through the swimmers!   They spotted the large turtle we had seen on our previous trip to Norman Island and hung above him waiting for him to stop munching for a quick breath of air, but after 20 minutes they had to admit he was not putting on much of a show! But the rest of the visit was as wonderful as before and this is certainly a fantastic spot.

We then nipped round to Great Harbour on Peter Island which was busier than last time but we were lucky enough to anchor in almost the same place.   Rob, with Steve’s very kind advice and assistance, settled down to his favourite occupation of loo maintenance (repair).  They discovered that the waste pipe had almost completely chocked itself with calcium, in less than the season since Rob last had it all apart and sorted out.

Meanwhile Chris and I had a very leisurely snorkel seeing a large, tagged turtle with a much smaller one who happily swam along with us;  Rob was also lucky enough to find the big one later in the afternoon and swam beside him for half an hour, right out of the bay.

In the evening we all had supper on board Serafina and got down to the serious matter of planning our navigation north, Chris and Steve kindly passing on lots of information, pilots (we now have a whole shelf devoted to American waters!) and charts.   We reciprocated with our experiences of heading further south down the East Caribbean chain – in a fairly underwhelming way!

I woke very early the next morning and after a couple of hours of fidgeting went to read on deck as it got light, but was treated to an amazing display of about 30 pelicans constantly diving further out in the bay, the bombing noise was very impressive.   There was obviously something very tasty attracting all this attention.   After a while the birds started moving towards us, so I decided to swim over and take a look.   Underwater where it suddenly starts to shallow, the whole bay was carpeted in shoals of 2” long greenish fish, constantly moving as large fish plunged through them.   I was in about 4’ of water when about 30 very large (some almost as long as me!) Tarpon came charging through the water towards them.   Fortunately the previous day we had read in Scott-Free’s superior fish identification book that Tarpon take no notice of humans and will not take fright, so I tried to “still my beating heart”!

It was so wonderful I swam back to the boat to drag a resistant Rob (something about early mornings, his first lie-in in months and fresh coffee) back to the beach.  We swam out and stayed to watch all this activity until we got cold, including the pelicans who after an initial rest to settle their tummies were back in the fray diving just by us which was fascinating to watch from underwater:  they stretch out their necks as they dive into the water managing not to crash land into the very shallow beach just under the surface.   For the rest of the day, the Tarpon cruised under Serafina again but ignored Scott-Free oddly.

We went ashore to get wifi so that we could Skype Ewan for his birthday and were offered a lift to the beach bar in one of the golf buggies that transport Peter Island Resort’s guests around.   When we got there we realised that Skyping was going to be impossible with the wonderful steel band in full swing for Easter Sunday lunch, complete with the charming resort nanny resplendent in bunny ears dancing away.   So we rang Ewan who told each of us the up-dated football news – how would we survive without this vital service?

Later on Chris, Steve and Rob separately had close encounters with a massive Eagle Ray – its tail alone was 10’ long.   Rob was impressed to discover just what a strong swimmer he has become in times of pure terror!   This bay offers so much with great snorkelling along the shallow edges, but its depth is home to very much larger species of all kinds;  and with the added challenge of deep anchoring and very few mooring buoys it is a relatively quiet anchorage.   Apart from the occasional water-skier or towed child’s bouncy thing (who were driving me demented yesterday as I tried to polish off our very unsightly exhaust mark down one side of the hull from a bucking splashing dinghy) it is a really civilised spot.

In the evening we were joined by Craig and Karene from Il Sogno for drinks and it was great to hear all their news from their voyage all the way to the south of Grenada and back, making us feel a little lazy with our one-way trip!   And we finished with a lovely chicken kurma barbeque courtesy of Scott-Free.

This morning, as there was no excitement in the bay, we foreswore the swimming although we were treated to a great fishing demonstration by two guys in a little boat slowly poling around the bay throwing a purse net out.   We didn’t feel it was necessary to tell them they were one day too late.  Craig pointed out that some of this activity was possibly due to the full moon on Saturday.   So we set off for a gentle sail up wind (Scott-Free showing us a nice pair of heels while we towed our bouncing dinghy and bemoaned our dirty bottom – yes, very poor losers!) to Marina Cay.   As we freed off rounding Beef Island we unfurled our second foresail for a last minute sprint, which was just perfect.   We are now sitting in a slightly bobbing anchorage but hopefully well protected from the expected NW swell due later on today from the storms off Florida.