Captain's Choice blog: The mass exodus

With the promise of milder winds for the next couple of days, the majority of the boats left Great Harbour Cay Marina Friday morning. With barely a breeze at the marina the no-see-ums were out in full force and although I did encounter them over the past 10 days they really attacked this time. Once we were out of the marina and in the breeze they were gone! The winds were light NE 8-10, we had some swells from the high winds the last few days, but the intervals were spread out which made the ride very comfortable. We headed to our anchorage, 35 miles south, to Hoffman's - Devil's Cay area of the Berrys where we stayed both Friday and Saturday night. It's amazing to be able to drop the anchor on a sand bottom in 10' and see the anchor like it's sitting in a foot of water. After setting up we headed out to explore the area by dinghy. Thank goodness Mark remembered the "looky bucket", it's an old bucket that Mark cut the bottom out of and replaced it with plexiglass. The water was a little choppy so you stick the "looky bucket" in the water and it's like looking through a mask. I saw something red in the water, not knowing what it was we headed over to explore, stuck the looky bucket in the water and to our amazement it was a big, beautiful red starfish. As we looked around we found at least 10 more, all different colors and sizes but none that looked like the red one. We were able to see some pretty blue fish and plant life.
By the end of the day there were 6 sailboats and 1 powerboat in the anchorage with us. We had to laugh, powerboats must not be too common in some of the anchorages, as we were dropping anchor some people in a dinghy said "oh, look a power boat", we definitely are the minority here in the Bahamas. I think the sailboats usually out number us by at least 10 to 1, not counting the big yachts of course. We continued our exploration on Saturday, walking to the blue hole and hiking around on one of the islands.
Decisions, decisions...we knew there were going to be a couple more days of lighter winds and we could go to the Exumas like we had originally planned to do or we could go to the Eleutheras. Our biggest concern is being in the Abacos when Allison arrives mid March and the Exumas puts us farther south than the Eleutheras. We checked the long range forecast and when we went to bed we still hadn't decided which course we were taking. Sunday morning we picked up our anchor at first light and headed out of the anchorage, the captain asking "which way are we going"? South will take us to the Exumas and east to the Eleutheras. I've always been that person when faced with a fork in the road to go right, which is exactly what we did and headed south to the Exumas. It was 97 miles to Highbourne Cay, winds were not as light as forecasted, but the seas were good. We headed into Highbourne Marina (very nice marina that caters to high end yachts, although we could have stayed there), to top off our fuel and water before making our way to the anchorage just in front of Highbourne. There were 26 boats total in the anchorage (1 yacht, 3 power boats, the rest sailboats and catamarans) so we thought this must be the place. It turned out to be one of our least favorite anchorages. There is such a surge in there and the boat just rocked and rolled all night long. Needless to say we were both up very early and couldn't wait until daylight so we could move on.

We had heard wonderful things about Cambridge Cay in the Exuma Park from Freedom and others and headed there Monday morning, a 44 mile trek. Winds were from the south about 15 mph which had us taking the waves on the bow. Nothing we couldn't handle but we had to keep the front panels closed or the salt spray would have been everywhere on the bridge. We were delighted when we got to the mooring fields that there were actually several mooring balls available, by days end there were 9 occupied and only 1 more remaining. Once tied up we used a little water and salt-away to hose the boat down, the salt was just everywhere! The area Exuma Park Harbor host came by, welcomed us to the mooring field and gave us the lay of the land. They are here in the mooring field on their boat and volunteer to collect the mooring fees and kind of act as peace keepers when the chartered yacht clients get a little too rambunctious on their water toys. They also told us not to feed the sharks! They have 4-5 reef sharks that make the rounds about 5 pm looking for food...as if on cue the sharks did show up, they swam around and went from boat to boat and then left.
During the afternoon we headed over to "the aquarium", a snorkel spot that is host to all sorts of colorful fish. Mark jumped in, I stayed in the dinghy and looked through the "looky bucket", it's difficult for me to get back in the dinghy as there is no ladder. Then we headed over to another plane wreck where we saw turtles and fish swimming about and a plane that was still pretty much intact laying in front of O'Brien's Cay in about 25' of water.

So far the Exumas are the place for the yachts, many have passed us on the way to anchorages and marinas. Most not only have a dinghy but also tow a 30-40'center console boat behind them. Everybody just having fun in the Bahamas. The other thing we noticed is there aren't any dolphins or many birds. There are birds of all kinds in Florida, but we've only seen a couple pelicans since getting to the Bahamas. Cambridge Cay will be home for a couple of days as the winds will be blowing 15-20 and gusting to 23.