Bellatrix

22 April 2016

Georgetown, Exuma, Bahamas

We left Georgetown, sailed to Long Island then back across to the Ragged Islands. The shallow waters of the banks require us to go east down a mile or so south then back to the west in Comer Channel.

We anchored at Water Cay and had the island to ourselves for a day and a half. Another boat arrived, “Blaze Star” out of Annapolis and they anchored the next cove over. We did some snorkeling and at one time were snorkeling around the boat on a small reef. I forgot to tell you the Long Island fisherman and some from the Dominican Republic fish here and take Conch. They clean their catch on their boats and clean conch on the beach, they throw the scrapes into the water. This is also the mating season for sharks in the Raggeds. While we were snorkeling we saw some Nurse sharks, harmless, and had Remoras under the boat. While we were snorkeling around the boat I noticed a LARGE dark shadow to my right and realized it was the biggest shark I’ve ever seen. I called to Robin and suggested rather strongly to “GET BACK TO THE BOAT!”. Needless to say that was the end of our snorkeling for the day.

The next day we moved on down to Flamingo Cay. We are told the Flamingos used to come here to feed on the small pink shrimp in the onshore ponds, no Flamingos anymore. We anchored at “Two Palm Beach”, well there used to be two palms, now just one. We had the island to ourselves again until “Blaze Star” arrived and later a Long Island fishing boat. Blaze Star told us the fishing boat was trying to hail us so we stopped by. The captain of the boat kindly told us we might want to anchor a little farther from shore as if the wind turned we might be in shallow water. While there I asked questions about what they were fishing for and how they did it. The boat was a 53 foot trawler type and was escorted by three center console skiffs. Each skiff had a crew of two. The mother ship would anchor and the each of the skiffs carrying two traps, much like our crab traps, would venture out on the banks. They would dive for conch for bait, find a small reef, and place the trap about 50 yards from the reef. They would then move away, smoke a joint, and go back and pull the trap. They repeated this process all day, they were catching Lane Snapper. At the end of the day they returned to the trawler and stuffed 30 gallon bags with their catch, about twelve bags from each skiff. The trawler had a freezer below. They stayed out until the freezer was full then return to Long Island to sell their catch.

We, along with Amy and Pat from Blaze Star were invited to the trawler for dinner. Fried whole fish, heads on, peas and rice and the best cole slaw ever. We drank rum and listened to stories late into the night. I was offered buds of home grown Long Island pot and a large joint of Jamaican rolled in a tobacco leaf. They smoked constantly. They were very friendly and hospitable, some of them are sailing in the Regatta and we hope to see them again this coming week.

We continue to have minor engine issues, the temperature sending unit is flaky, and the transmission cooler sprung a corrosion leak. We were informed of a weather front coming. The Raggeds are fine in easterlies but can get untenable in any blow from the west or north. We headed back to Georgetown to order parts as there is no internet or phone cells in the Raggeds.

Now normally we would cross east, eight hours back over to Long Island spend the night, then west to Georgetown. We tried a short cut through Hog Cay last year and found it too shallow, it would cut a day off of the trip. Blaze Star draws 6 inches more than us and told us he had a GPS track to get through on a high tide. Long story short, we made it through with only a few heart stopping moments and got into Georgetown harbor just at night fall.

Since we won’t be cruising next year, we have been checking out resorts to vacation here sometime in early Spring. We have found what we think is a good place, we will rent a boat to get around. We hope some of our friends might like to join us, we would love to show them a little of what this life is about.

The Island Family Regatta is next week, local sailing skiff racing, food, drink, music and parties ending with a Junkanoo. It ends next weekend and we will be heading north, Robin has to be in Baltimore the end of May and might have to leave me sometime during the trip to start work. A little sooner than we expected when we started this journey but opportunity changes plans. She thinks one of the worst parts of work is to have to wear shoes. Seriously we will miss the friends we’ve made here the most, it’s been a great lifestyle.

We have been partying hard trying to enjoy every minute we have left. Rake and Scape music, Texas Holdem poker, beach party this afternoon. Boat parts arriving Wednesday of next week. Once Regatta starts there is racing during the day and carnival, music, rum and food every night.