Thursday, March 21, 2024
This morning we all set an alarm for 6 am. The plan was to eat a quick, light breakfast before hopping in the dinghy and motoring over to one of the snorkel spots I discovered yesterday. So, when the sun came up, we grabbed our gear and set off.
As we approached the shallow sandy spot we intended to anchor the dinghy on, someone spotted a large dark spot hovering over the sand and wouldn’t you know, that giant Southern Stingray was there and now the guys saw it.
Grant and I jumped in the water and he swam with the ray a bit, but by the time the others were ready and in the water, we had frightened him and away he went.
So we spent about 45 minutes snorkeling and saw squirrelfish, starfish, angelfish, lots of conch shells, anemones, feather duster worms, and lots more. Since the sun wasn’t very strong yet, it did not take very long before we all got cold, so we got back in the dinghy, motored over to Vildiur, and readied the boat for sailing.
More coffee was a given to warm us up and once we were underway, Todd fixed us all a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. It was delicious, but dealing with bacon grease while heeled over is not for the faint of heart.
We had good winds and got to Allens Cay about an hour before we anticipated. We lowered the sails and motored into a rather full anchorage, and began the task of setting the anchor. We tried twice in one spot, before giving up and trying in a spot that another boat had just left. Third time was the charm, and we all hopped into the water for the brief swim from the boat to the beach.
There is a large population of North Bahamian Rock Iguanas here on the beach in Allens Cay. The guidebook says that they are ill-tempered, bite and whip their tails at tourists. Just another adventure for this crew!
We brought some overripe, fermented pineapple with us, and the iguanas did act quite eager and potentially dangerous, but they didn’t seem too happy about the pineapple. The boys were tossing the pineapple onto the beach, and the iguanas were lunging at the fruit, but they didn’t eat it. I mostly stayed in calf-deep water and out of the fray.
We didn’t stay too long at the beach before we swam back to our boat. We had time to swim around the boat if we wanted, but everyone just got back in the boat, so we took off to head back to Nassau.
The boys got the boat sailing while I fixed us all lunch.
Our plan for the remainder of the day was to sail to Palm Cay Marina by 6 pm and spend the night in the marina with shore power and AC. We needed to motor sail a bit due to unfavorable wind conditions, but we still made good time. About an hour or so outside of Nassau, we practiced some sailing maneuvers for fun before we got the boat ready for docking in the marina.
The marina had us pull up to the fuel dock, but the marina technically closed at 5 pm, so there was no one around to help gas up our boat. We asked about moving into a slip, and the guy said we could, but then on Friday morning, we’d need to come back out and fill up.
That seemed like entirely too much work so we spent the night tied up to the fuel dock without shore power and AC. We had enough food to make another meal, but our salty sailing crew had run out of rum, so Nathan and I walked to the grocery store for rum, tortilla chips, and celebratory ice cream bars.
We came back and had our last dinner on board the boat. It’s supposed to be super windy in the morning, so we tied up the boat well and had our last sleep aboard Vildiur.
