And then there were two!

                                                              And then there were two!

  Beck, Owen and Christina left for Canada Saturday morning, leaving Henry and I to ourselves for the first time since he flew back to Canada in January.   As much as we enjoyed sharing our adventures with so many people, we're both looking forward to the next leg of our adventure, Wardrick Wells, Staniel Cay and the Thunderball Grotto, and last but certainly not least Georgetown.

  We didn't have to leave the marina until noon, so we made the best of their amenities right up to the last minute, coiling up the water hose around 11:45, making sure we had full tanks before we left.  I also had another hot shower and emptied the garbage bins before casting off.  

   We decided to move the boat out into Montague Bay for the day and begin our journey in the morning.  We took the time to tidy up the boat and reclaim our space.  I'd been sleeping on the port setee during Beck's visit, so I was eager to sleep in my own bed again, and Henry was happy to play some video games, watch some You-tube and relax before the coming adventure.

  The following morning, Sunday March 31st, I was up just after sunrise to give us an early start.  I had my tea and some breakfast before firing up the engine and readying the boat to sail.  Once I'd pulled the anchor, I entered a heading into the autopilot and put the boat in gear.  As we slowly motored out of the Bay I removed the sail cover, rigged the halyard and hoisted up the main.  The wind was more or less on the nose, but I was hopeful of doing some sailing.  Once we reached Porgies Rock, we turned south-east towards Wardrick Wells and pulled out the jib.  

  With Henry still in bed the sailing was all up to me, I tried my best to sail as close to the wind and course as I could but Island Eclipse would have nothing of it.  The wind was light and the jib kept luffing as I tried to cheat my way east. Had the wind been stiffer we might have had a chance, but it wasn't meant to be. 

   In order to sail our way to Wardrick Wells we'd have to head north-east first, before tacking back. The thought of light wind sailing for 15 hours just wasn't on my bucket list, so I caved after an hour or so.  I pulled in the jib, and fired up the engine to end my pain and suffering, bringing the boat up to a cruising speed of 6.5 knots, as opposed to the 2.5 knots I'd been sailing in the wrong direction.

  It was around 10am when I finally woke sleeping beauty from his slumber and cooked us both some breakfast burritos.  We spent most of the day just hanging out as we made our way across the bank.  We arrived in the Emerald Bay mooring field of Wardrick Wells around 4:30pm, giving us just enough time to head ashore and pay for our mooring ball.  Exploring would have to wait until tomorrow as the day had already been quite long, for one of us at least.

   The next morning Henry wasn't quite as fortunate, I woke him up much earlier than he would have liked, but 'them's the breaks'.  We had adventuring to do and I wasn't prepared to wait until noon to do it.  Fortunately I'd made him pancakes, which softened the blow-back for the early wake up call.  You can't say much when your pancakes are getting cold!

  Wardrick Wells had a number of points of interest, first was the blow holes on the north-east end of the island.  The Bahama islands sit on a bed of ancient coral, most of the perimeter of the islands have eroded over time, becoming somewhat  porous and hollow.  On this island, the eastern shore is exposed to Bahama Sound and after years of waves bashing up against them, caves and hollows have been carved.

  Unfortunately our timing was off, so neither the tide nor swell was large enough to spray water out of holes in the coral cut over a millennia.  All we got was a hollow whistle and and a small plume of spray when the waves rolled ashore.  it was very anticlimactic, as I was hoping for something more akin to the scene in Fools Gold than a wet fart...

  From there we moved on to the hiking trail, which took us up and down the sand, across bridges and through the flood planes.  It was very pretty and picturesque as we made our way around.  Not for the faint of heart for sure, as the trail turned steep and somewhat treacherous at times.  Although I didn't see any "Use at own Risk" signs, I definitely think that's the general idea out in the middle of nowhere.

  By around 4 or 5 o'clock we'd explored most of the things we'd read about in the cruising guide, so we headed back to Island Eclipse for some dinner. It wouldn't be a movie night, as Wardrick Wells didn't have any WIFI, so we headed to bed reasonably early for a change.

  The next day was another early start as we eagerly headed towards Staniel Cay.  I was, however, a little apprehensive of this leg of the journey as the water we needed to traverse was a little skinny for Island Eclipse.  We had to time our arrival with the days' high tide in order to make it over the flats and into the anchorage.  When we arrived, Henry took the wheel and I stood watch on the bow, making sure to avoid the coral heads hiding just under the surface.

  We made it to the anchorage without dilemma, dropping the anchor just west of the Grotto in 10' of water.  Although it was reasonably early, we decided to wait until the next day to SCUBA dive. Instead we splashed the dinghy and headed over to the "Pig Beach" on Big Major.  We'd heard many stories about swimming pigs in Bahamas, but it's one of those things you need to see to believe.

  Not unlike the iguanas on Allen's Cay, the pigs stormed the beach as we arrived, forcing us to retreat quickly back to the dinghy.  Significantly larger than the Iguanas, they were much more intimidating, fortunately one of the tour boats showed up with a ton of tourists, and their presence lured all but a few of the pigs away from the dinghy.

  Now that we had a bit of breathing room, I pulled out a bag of cut-up apples to feed them, which was not a good idea...one of the larger pigs grabbed the entire bag in its mouth, beginning a tug-of-war that I was destined to lose.  The bag tore open and apple chunks fell at my feet, I grabbed what I could and jumped back in the dinghy before one of my little piggies went to market.   Overwhelmed by their aggressiveness, we rowed the dinghy away from the beach, and  fed what we had left to some of the smaller, less intimidating pigs that swam by.

  Our good friend William insisted that we visit the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, so we did.   After grabbing a quick shower we put on some presentable clothes and headed ashore.  The Yacht Club was hopping when we arrived as it was Happy Hour, we grabbed a couple of seats at the bar and ordered some drinks.  Henry had a pop and a BLT, and I got the Rum Punch 2 for 1 special.  Since my stroke in 2019 I don't really drink much, so the rum punch special went right to my head, mostly because it was a glass of rum with a splash of fruit punch.  We didn't close the place but we did stay for a while, meeting many, new and interesting people.  By the time we got back to Island Eclipse I was half in the bag so I mostly just fell into bed,  I'm pretty sure Henry stayed up for a while longer because he was hard to get out of bed the next day.

  The next day we had to wait on a slack tide to dive the Grotto, so there wasn't much point in getting out of bed early.  Good thing, because I felt less than stellar after our evening ashore.  I finally managed to get Henry out of bed around noon, so we headed to the Grotto shortly after brunch, (his breakfast and my lunch).  We decided to snorkel the Grotto first to see if it was worth breaking out the SCUBA gear,  and indeed it was.  We spent an hour and a half on our first visit, snorkeling our way in and around the cave.  By the time we got out we were frozen, I couldn't top shivering and Henrys lips were blue.  The water is quite warm at 27 degrees, but once the sun has past it's apex the water quickly cools off.  Our SCUBA adventure would have to wait until tomorrow, tonight we'll head ashore to empty our garbage and explore.

  It would have cost us $10 to dump our garbage at the yacht club, but with the dump only being a couple of miles down the road we decided to go for a walk and throw it out ourselves.  Staniel Cay is fairly developed compared to some of the other islands, large mansions overlook the ocean from atop the hills.  The interior of the island's north end is home to a lagoon at high tide, and the airfield.  The rest of the island's inhabitants live in smaller, bright-colored houses that dot the roadways crisscrossing the island.

  It wasn't a great distance to the dump, and it was easy to find.  All we needed do was follow the smoke as it was still smoldering after yesterday's burn.   A surprise at first, but the longer we're here, the less we notice the weekly burning of garbage from Island to Island.  With very little in the way of infrastructure, each island is left to manage things like waste and power generation on their own.  

  On returning from our walk we observed a large crowd gathered on the west side of the club.  We walked over to see what was the big attraction only to find a large group of Nurse sharks cruising the shallow waters at the base of the concrete steps.  Still in our swimmies, we joined the group of people already in the water, soon we were surrounded by dozens of big beautiful sharks, gliding through the waters around us.  They'd swim past you, just close enough to touch, but not close enough to freak you out.  As the crowd of people thinned, so did the school of sharks,  they slowly retreated to the deeper waters of the marina basin once they realized feeding time was over.  Once the excitement had dwindled, we too made our way back to the deep waters of the marina  to fetch our dinghy and head home for dinner and a movie.  

  It was around 11pm when I finally got to sleep, so I didn't end up getting out of bed until 10 the next morning.  I guess all that swimming and walking really tired me out, I let Henry sleep until I'd finished my breakfast and started his.  It's much easier to get him out of bed when there's a hot meal on the table.

  The Grotto was awash in tourists today, boat after boat came whizzing by loaded with eager visitors.   Not really interested in swimming with the groups, we waited until around 4pm to do our dive.  Being Henry's first real open water SCUBA dive we were eager to get to it, pre-prepped all the gear in the dinghy before heading over to the Grotto and dropping the hook.  Now empty, the Grotto was ours to explore, we quickly donned our gear, and dropped into the clear blue water.

  As much as we enjoyed the snorkeling, it didn't compare to our SCUBA dive.  The cave was much more intricate below the surface, with hollows and smaller caves within.  And the fish, ohhh the fish!  The Grotto was home to a wide variety of fish species, from Sargent Majors, Barracudas, and Grey Angel fish, to sea rays and turtles, and of course my favourite, the Queen Angel fish.  What a first dive experience for Henry, far better than he would have experienced back home in Lake Ontario, where the fish are just as surprised to see you, as you are them!  That's if you even get to see any at all.  In my last 15 years diving the QCYC lagoon, I've only come across fish two, maybe three times, even though the water is often clear as day.  

  We both took our tanks all the way down to 500 pounds before calling it a day, and what a fabulous day it was, getting the opportunity to share this adventure with Henry was a truly wonderful experience.  

  The sun was on its way to bed when we made finally made it back to Island Eclipse.  We unloaded and rinsed off the gear, grabbed hot showers and prepared a quick meal to eat while we watched an episode of The Rookie.  Henry was asleep in the cockpit not halfway through the episode, so I turned it off early and guided him to his room. Once he was down for the count, I gave Deb a call, recounting our day's adventures, before calling it a night myself.

  It would be another day before the weather turned in our favour for the final push to Georgetown, so we snorkeled the Grotto one more time before packing our gear away in preparation for our sail the following day.

  Transiting from the bank to the sound through one of the many cuts between the islands can be treacherous if not prepared.  The tide rushes through the cuts with tremendous force, producing currents in excess of 3 to 4 knots.   The prevailing winds that morning were east, so we had to leave the bank on a rising tide, which was easy enough for us with a cruising speed of 7 knots, but smaller, slower vessels would make very little progress in such conditions.  Trying to navigate the cut on a falling tide in an east wind would make for tall, steep waves capable of pounding even the biggest of vessels.  In fact, this season alone saw four cruising vessels, one barge and one tug lost while transiting various cuts throughout The Bahamas.  Not us though, with Henry at the helm and I on the bow, we motored through the cut like we knew what we were doing.  We headed north east into the prevailing swell, before turning south east once we'd cleared into deeper water.

  It was 56 miles to Georgetown, and although the conditions weren't optimal with 6-7' foot quartering seas we made good time arriving two hours ahead of schedule.  It was a good ride for me, but the quartering seas made Henry ill shortly after we'd left Staniel Cay,  and with few options for a boat our size to duck into, we were forced to sail through the conditions.

  Once we'd navigated our way through the sprawling channel leading to Georgetown, the seas subsided and the colour returned to Henry's face.  After a short motor down the channel we found an open spot amongst the other 450 boats to drop the hook and call it a day.

  We are finally here!!!  Georgetown Bahamas, the end of our journey south!!  Now we have 6 weeks to lay back and enjoy the weather before turning around and doing it all over again.  But until then, snorkeling, volleyball and exploring will fill our days! 

Thanks for reading!