Now, It Feels Like the Bahamas

White Cay. January 23-26

We forayed south from Great Harbour Cay.

We tried the bank-side (west side) shallow draft route to an anchorage on the west side of Hoffman’s Cay, near its blue hole. Thankfully, I followed traditional wisdom and tried the route at mid-high tide, with a rising tide. We grounded on a beautiful white sand bottom.

I threw out the anchor, to keep us from going further aground, donned snorkel and mask, and jumped over to see what was around us. We kedged Hiatus about 10’ to her starboard side, where she was able to float with a couple of inches of water below her keel, and waited for the tide to give us a path out. 

Kedging is the process of moving a boat by anchor. Drop an anchor where you want to be. Haul on the anchor rode, and maybe you’ll go there.  It takes two anchors, which we had at that time (that’s a hint of a later story). We backtracked and passed Hoffman’s on the deep-water Channel (east) side and entered the anchorage bounded by Hoffman’s, White and Little Gaulding Cays—usually just called White Cay.

 

 

A beautiful spot, a beautiful following day. It began with exhales. I jumped up to the cockpit to see a small pod of dolphins working the anchorage. I dove to check the anchor set and had the company of four spotted eagle rays on my swim back to the boat. We snorkeled the reef at White Cay. A bull shark (a nasty, not nice, shark) cruised over to see whether we were chumming at the back end of Hiatus.

We SUPed! Our first outings on F’s inflatable SUP. Francine doesn’t like the video because it makes us look old and unstable. I tell her it will make our future SUP videos better, in contrast. We dinghied up Hoffman’s west side and hiked to the blue hole. 

A lovely set of days. So lovely that our spirits were hardly dampened when we drowned the GoPro on the way back from the blue hole and when later the Packers lost the NFC Championship game.