We are anchored next to a pretty large private island called Bell Island. It's near Cambridge Cay in the central Exumas if you want to look it up. The beach is beautiful, although since it's private we are not able to go ashore. We're here in a nice natural anchorage along with about a dozen other boats in anticipation of a major storm coming through tonight and tomorrow. The next 12 to 24 hours are going to have very strong winds with a chance of waterspouts (tornados over the water), and winds up to 60 kts — near hurricane force in the gusts.
We have spent the last couple days taking the dinghy to explore nearby islands, walk on beaches, hike, explore a submerged wrecked plane, and snorkel with another cruising couple (Jay and Peggy) we have met and really enjoyed getting to know.
Hiking near Bell Rock, Cambridge Cay
Yesterday we went to Rocky Dundas which is a rocky island with two caves you can swim into. When you get inside the cavern, you can climb out of the water and walk around in one of them. To get inside the other cave, you need to dive down to get inside. They are reported to have been used by the ancient Lucayans. MB and the other woman got within about 15 feet of a six foot black tipped shark at one of the snorkeling sites. I was very impressed with how fast she swam back to the dinghy! I think she realized as long as she was ahead of Peggy she was pretty safe.
Pictures from snorkeling at Rocky Dundas caves:
It was a beautiful day today with no hint of what is coming other than the rapidly falling barometric pressure. To get off the boat one final time before the wildness starts (actually it is starting as I type this), we went snorkeling this afternoon around the little bay we are anchored in. There's not a lot of coral in here, which makes it good for anchoring, but usually makes areas like this pretty boring for snorkeling. Outside of the bigger coral areas, there really is very little marine life in these waters. We're using sea water to wash our dishes now to give you an idea of how crystal clean it is. Don't worry, we still do the final rinse in fresh water! We swam over to an area not too far from our boat where there is a little coral along the shoreline and we saw some pretty fish there. In a small mangrove area near shore we also saw some young fish of some sort. They were about the size you would put in a small home aquarium. We then followed along the edge of the coral shoreline away from the beach. The wave action tends to undercut the hard coral shoreline and this provides habitat for a lot of sea creatures. Two very cool things happened. The first was we saw a sea turtle swimming. He wasn't huge-maybe two and a half feet across the shell, but big enough to be fun to see. They usually do a little sprint at first when spooked which is what this one did. It is impressive how fast they can move. Unlike most, however, this one sprinted straight ahead and I could keep it in sight. It then slowed down and I was able to follow it at a pretty close distance for about 100 yards. It's fascinating watching them swim. They are really flying in the water much as birds fly in the air. They are so ungainly on land, but they are very graceful and efficient swimmers in the water. I now understand how they cross oceans. They are using very little energy and can move pretty fast with very minimal use of their flippers. It was very cool to watch and his markings and coloration were beautiful with the sun shining through the water on his shell. After a while I stopped tormenting the turtle and paused to see where MB had gone. I saw motion off to my right toward the deeper water where the boats are anchored and saw some clouds of sand lifting up from the sea floor. This is very strange, so I slowly moved toward it. I saw several medium sized rays "flapping" their wings gently on the bottom. At this point MB showed up, so I popped up and we compared notes and I told her about the turtle and the rays. She was going to see if she could find the turtle. She loves turtles for some reason - maybe they remind her of me in some way. Not too bright, but amusing to watch maybe? I wanted to get a better look at the rays. I moved toward the rays and got a good look when the sand cleared for an instant. It was not several small rays- it was one big ray, and it's wingspan was about 10 feet. It was huge! To get an idea of the size - it was about the size of a mid-sized car (only much flatter). I decided I was close enough. I have never been that close to a large sea creature that was not behind glass at an aquarium. I don't know what it was doing. My guess is it was a female either laying eggs or giving birth or maybe it was just trying to hide itself. If I had internet I would research if rays lay eggs or have live babies, but we've had no connectivity for a long time. I watched for some time, but not knowing that much about rays I was not sure what a "safe" distance is from a monster ray. They do have poisonous spines on their tails. I was feeling like a safe distance might need to include the boundary between water and air, but it seemed very unconcerned about me being there. Eventually I went back to the boat. It's odd to think that it may still be down there on the bottom about 50 feet from our boat doing whatever it is rays do in the sand. Its good life still has some mysteries. (This and the previous post are going to Ashley via radio from the boat and she is posting them.) This s works for text, but we can't include pictures. Speaking of pictures, since we had such low expectations for this snorkeling excursion I left the underwater camera on the boat. Sigh, won't do that again.
Pictures from other snorkeling this past week:
Submerged plane near OBrien's Cay (saw a black tipped shark swimming away from us here)
Rays are everywhere, from just a foot across to the 8 foot one David spied!
It's hard to capture all of the amazing colors of the fish with our camera.
There are tons of these little black and while and yellow fish on all of the reefs. They swarm around you, very friendly!
This big Horse Eye Jack was very friendly and wanted to be fed. He kept circling around us, bumping into our hands. If you look closely you can see the remora attached to his back.