The windy weather pattern finally broke and gave us some nice, calm days to explore different islands. We headed to Buena Vista Cay (population of 1) to visit Edward. He was born here on this island and has returned, in his mid-70’s, to re-start a homestead complete with goats, sheep, dogs, geese, peacocks, chicken and ducks. A very sweet man, he is full of life and stories. Most of his family, wife & children live in Nassau but visit occasionally and send provisions. Edward seems content to live a rustic life with its minor set-backs (e.g., loss of skiff boat, generator not working), but his latest crisis was really trying him until divine intervention and cruisers came to his aid to solve his rum shortage.
This island boasts a spectacular beach of white sand, an extensive harbor and great rocky crags to hike around on like the goats. The bay has some nice coral heads, but you’ll be sharing them with the resident sharks who are likely drawn here by the commercial fishing boats. Mark and John started a fishing session off in the bay and Mark dropped in right on top of a huge bull shark. Luckily he was well fed and swam past unperturbed while the divers leapt back into the dinghy.
We headed towards Double Breasted Cay for the next predicted wind-shift for protection from the south and west. Here we continued to get in more underwater time and social time, while watching spectacular sunsets ~ two of which were green flashes!
One evening the sky got very hazy and almost looked like a fog had rolled in. We had all commented on how strange and eery the clouds looked and now we know why.
Around 8 PM we had a huge wind gust from the west followed by steady NW winds in the high 30 kt range set in for about an hour, worthy of an anchor watch.
Once the winds settled back down into the 20’s it felt relatively calm.
After noting that our weather station had recorded a high gust of 55 kts (!) we went to bed.
It turns out that this was a derecho, straight-line wind event, that hit the Exuma Cays in the early evening as far north as Black Point before heading to us in the Jumentos.
Most boats had been expecting west winds due to the clocking front, yet since the high winds were unpredicted there was still boat dragging and damage in some cases.
As usual after a clocking front, the winds were now back out of the north so we returned to Buena Vista Cay, this time in the south bay. The waters are pristine here. I had a wonderful time snorkeling with camera and a beach walk with Barbara while the guys had more good luck fishing. This water time was thankfully shark-free, until a bull shark visited us again in the evening looking for scraps…
Here we also had a visit from Cameron who was out fishing with his brother and 18 other fisherman on the Sweet Angeline.
It was horrible to learn that his fishing vessel the Captain Ryan was destroyed in hurricane Joaquin, so they are sharing time on this ship.
Hard to believe it’s been six years since we last saw him in Long Island ~ it was great to catch up!
This weather pattern meant one more thing for us ~ a good weather window to head to Great Exuma to renew our Visas.
Stopping at Water Cay overnight, Mark & John each nabbed a 6 lb lobster… one too big to get out of his hole losing some limbs in the process.
The next day-hop brought us through the beautiful, current-rippled waters at Hog Cay cut and into Georgetown at Elizabeth Harbor. After spending the last few months with 1-4 boats total, it was unreal to see so many masts!
