Exumas Part 1

Foreshadowing a long stay in the beautiful Exumas, this is part 1. We left Nassau on Wednesday, with much less than perfect weather - high winds and fairly bumpy seas, but coming from the NE and we were traveling SE, so ultimately everyone hung on and we had a fast 4 hour sail. The principal issue on this route is crossing the Yellow Banks, which have many coral heads, some of which are shallow enough (6 feet or less at low water) to cause problems. We timed our route so that we hit the Yellow Banks at high tide, we also diverted to the west of the banks to hopefully see less coral heads. The plan worked out very well, we never saw less than 14 feet of water, while Rae Ann took bow watch and directed us around the three coral heads that we came across. They are very easy to see as they stand out black against the brilliant white sand bottom.

Our hasty departure from Nassau was two fold, one the weather was going to be the same for the next few days and we did not want to be stuck so to speak. The second issue is that we had heard that Nassau was a bit dangerous, well frankly other than not having any sidewalks to duck the traffic we did not see this, mostly just friendly people going about their business. However, on Monday as the wind was howling through the marina I was helping others to dock their boats along with one other gentleman. He told me his story. Had left his boat at the marina for a trip back to London. Upon his return, everything was stolen - food, clothes everything. He said that he also caught people trying to break into another boat just a couple days ago. He said "you do lock yourself in at night?"

Well this is a bit difficult for us because we cannot lock our companionway from the inside. Anyway I was unnerved enough to lock everything down on the boat, then lock the companionway, then crawl through a hatch into the boat. By the way I am certain this is why Nassau gets such a bad rap, I relay the same story that everybody else does from the same person, and suddenly there is a rumor of 10 plus thefts......

We arrived at Highborne Cay, anchoring off the west coast. We spent 4 days snorkeling (Jake is starting to get the hang of it but tends not to breath through his snorkel quote "it is just like when I jump in, daddy, I freeze my whole body up") and beach playing. I tried out my new spear, successfully, definitely more to my style than fishing which has always been to passive for me. The thrill of floating over the fish until it ignores you, making a quick quiet decent and the letting go with the spear is quite fun. Of course you quickly look for sharks chasing the blood trail. We also went over to Allans Cay to see the iguanas, which came out in droves once we came close to the beach, obviously used to being fed.

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