Tobago Cays
Winya_wynah
Mon 9 Mar 2009 22:11
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We are back in Tobago Cays. (8th
March) As I mentioned in the last blog the Cays are surrounded
by reefs and islands, so as the weather has turned **** about face and all the
usual anchorages are now exposed, the world and his uncle has had to find
safe places to 'park'. The Cays are windy and choppy but out of the
swell so we chose here.
Last night we had arranged to go to a beach BBQ on
the west side of Union Island, having moved position in the bay twice, the first
turned out to be too close to the beach as the waves started to break closer and
closer, we decided to do anchor watch instead of leave the boat. The BBQ
chef offered to bring dinner to us but that was not the point so we opened
emergency rations of baked beans and sat tight. We left before 8 this
morning to come back to the Cays, once we had negotiated the first headland and
alot of confused sea there it was an OK short trip, I don't
think I'll be booking into the spa for a sea salt scrub when I return to
the 'normal world'..... overrated I'd say.
We do need to get back to Bequia at some stage and
the forecast has the wind coming from the south in a couple of days so that
would get us back there double quick. We are finding it difficult to get a
weather forecast here so the next update will be from Walter the boat boy in the
morning, we ordered banana bread already so we know we will see
him!
Anyway back to the Cays, we managed to
take photos of the turtles feeding in the sea grass patch just off our
stern
 and the flying gurnard off our port side.
 The gurnards are fascinating now we have had a
chance to see them 'work'. They are the shape of an old aircraft, very
square head and long triangular body, they have long pectoral fins
that fan out about 130degrees and only then can you see they are
edged with bright blue. The best bit though is they use a shorter part at
the front of the fins (complete with 5 'fingers') to turn small stones and
coral over when looking for food, systematically moving over the sea bed moving
bits to right and left. It looks just as if they have hands they are so
dexterous.
9th March
Since then we have been swimming out to Horseshoe
Reef surrounding us, few good fish out there too! On the way back we
came across a 5ft Barracuda sitting over a small patch of grass, no problem with
that except he started to follow us, getting gradually closer and looking
mean. Barracudas can only look mean owing to their long lower jaw but he
wasn't even trying to smile! Skipper decided he might be attracted by the
silver colour fins so no point trying to out swim a barracuda took off the fins
and swam holding them out of the water. Still being followed... should we
leave the fins for his lunch and swim faster? Thankfully he eventually
lost interest (took a while) and as we were presumably clear of his patch
fins went back on to swim the last 100yds to Winny.
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