My brother Jim, his wife Ania, and their son Patryk came for a visit. Most years we all have a week of fishing in Canada, but this year it was cancelled. Having them aboard Makai is going to be a fun replacement fishing vacation.
They changed out of their travel clothes, had some quick refreshments, my ‘foodie’ family did an inventory of the spice rack and other galley items and we headed back to town to take care of a little business before heading to the outer islands. We’ve spent most of the last month with our ‘kid boat’ friends. They were all in playing basketball near the cell phone store where Patryk bought Sim card for Bahamas wifi. Most of our pals are heading to the Ragged Islands/Jumentos, we’ll meet them there in about two weeks.
With Makai’s refrigerator loaded and the Hobie stowed for the long day at sea, we headed north to a few favorite anchorages.
Marie likes to stand on the front of the mast for a better view.
Genny is always trying to take charge, once in awhile Eric lets her have the helm.
Roy put out the poles and in less than an hour after leaving Georgetown “Fish On” screamed from the port reel.
Everyone was so excited to see the shimmering blue green fish jump at the end of the line. As Roy brought the fish closer to the boat my anxiety kicked in. This part always worries me. We only lost one fish, but I was sick over it for days. Jim grabbed the net but even Roy’s giant net isn’t big enough for a 41 inch Mahi Mahi.
In the end he just pulled it up on the back step and I threw a towel over it and held it down for a quick drink of alcohol. This is a perfect way to begin a fishing trip!
Roy cleaned the first side and Jim cleaned the second side. We ended up with a big bag of meat to keep our fish eaters fed for awhile.
The wind patterns are changing. December gave us nonstop east winds but in January the winter storms from up north sent frontal passages that provide wind that changes direction 360 degrees every week. Light winds from the west are predicted and the channel between Normans Pond Cay and Leaf Cay offers good protection from those westerlies.
For dinner Patryk digs into the galley combining spices and flavors. We had several meals of Lobster and Snapper in the freezer to get us started, but fishing trips are planned to keep these seafood dinners going. Don’t worry, I’m not out of a job, I still have bread and rolls, deserts and three non-seafood eating people to cook for.
Our guests live in Buffalo where there isn’t much opportunity for snorkeling and spear fishing. We started our day at the beach so Jim and Patryk could get a little snorkeling practice in before presenting them with the reef. The beach at Leaf Cay is the residence of a couple dozen Iguanas. They have become habituated by the tour boats that come and feed them for their passengers.
Our friends on Tangent met up with us. The girls had fun playing at the beach while the fishermen searched the reef for dinner. Roy did a great job bringing us a jumbo lobster and large snapper and teaching Jim and Patryk to shoot glass eye snappers.
Roy likes to pose his crawfish for a photo.
Patryk agreed with this posing pleasure as well.
As always, the fishermen are rewarded with steamed horns and legs for their after dive snack.
On its way around the compass, the wind is now coming from the north. Williams bay is a great place to anchor in these conditions. The bottom is sandy, there are three nice beaches in front of us, opportunities to walk the paths to the windward side of the island and fun snorkeling with out spears.
The kids played all day and we had movies and dinner with Tangent in the evenings.
The other side of the island has a beautiful coast line of jagged rocks, cliffs, and coves formed by the crashing waves and foamy water.
After just a few days, Tangent had plans to revisit anchorages to the north and we have plans for the Brigantines.
It’s sad to say goodbye to friends now because chances are we won’t see them again. We’ve met so many interesting people and quickly became pals, it’s really hard to move on.
You might think to cut down your pocket pinch levitra on line sale a little. And yours is surely something that might be fixed – most likely by cheap levitra but most particularly by means of each of you. The users of such medicines are http://melissaspetsit.com/blog/ viagra sildenafil increasing every year. On the cost factor, you samples of viagra melissaspetsit.com can see Kamagra side effects for the first few times of its usage. The Brigantines are a group of islands about 3 miles off to the west. The area is quite shallow but there is enough water for Makai.
As always getting in the water means spearfishing. Jim and Patryk are anxious for success with this form of fishing. Jim has taken Roy river and lake fishing in NY and Canada for the last five years or so and now it is Roy’s turn to teach them to fish. Unfortunately, Roy is still bringing in massive sea monsters while everyone else is lucky to get a goldfish. I was doing my job pulling the dinghy along while Roy hunts when I heard him squawking through his snorkel. The next thing I saw was the end of his spear swimming away and then a puff of sand as it disappeared under a rock. What was that! After the sand settled down again he found his prize. It was crazy to watch Roy swim with this giant fish. Not too long after the first one he got another much smaller one.
This Mutton Snapper weighed in at 15 pounds and provided almost as much meat at the Mahi Mahi did.
Today was a day of ups and downs. We were excited that Roy got this giant sea monster, but it was a bummer that there weren’t many fish for Jim and Patryk to practice with. The day was gorgeous, but in the kid chaos earlier someone forgot to securely fasten the surfboard they were playing with and it floated away. We went out and searched in the dinghy but there were so many places it could have floated off to there is no way we could find it. Eric and Topaz went out for a sail to search but it really felt hopeless.
The rest of the gang went to the beach and out for more spear fishing.
This trip is Ania’s first experience with snorkeling and she has been loving the beauty of the small coral heads in the warm shallow water.
The girls played in the shallows until the 4pm no see-um witching hour. Ahh the bugs attacked and we were stranded at the beach. We all moved out away from the shore as far as we could until the guys came back for us. On the way back to Makai the wind died down to nothing. While the crew was cleaning up I took the dinghy to retrieve Eric and the Hobie Cat. Wowsie, he had the surfboard! Talk about a needle in a haystack. Eric said it was just floating out there and he came upon it, what great luck. We moved Makai back to Williams Bay as some wind was predicted overnight and a sheltered anchorage is a better choice for the night.
Today is a land exploration day.
We walked up to the 123 foot Perry’s Peak, reportedly the highest point in the Exumas. We also went to the abandoned research center to take a peek at the buildings, the air strip and the beaches on the windward side.
This is another gorgeous day in paradise. Eric and Patryk sailed on the Hobie while the rest of us were in the dinghy.
As the wind continues on its way around the compass we had a day with wind blowing from the south east, perfect to head north a bit to Rudder Cut Cay.
Rudder Cut is one of the places we have to be concerned with the tidal current. When the tide is changing, the water flows faster than we can swim, so we put out a line with a float on the end for anyone who wants to go in. Eventually the tide changes and the current goes slack, today so did the wind. It was like looking through a piece of glass, we could see the bottom that clearly.
Roy set up poles for our guests to try to catch a few of the fish they could see swimming by. They had fun with a few catches but typically the fish that bite the bait aren’t good eating so they were released. Here is one of Roy’s favorite pompano that evaded the spear.
Genny had a chance to do a little wake boarding with a great view of the reefs she skimmed over.
We swam to the cave and saw some squid along the way.
Sadly Rudder the lonely dog still lives on the island. We met a guy who works at a resort on a Cay about an hour’s speed boat ride away. He said he comes to feed her a bucket full of meat scraps from the resort on his days off. He also told us the story that she was on the island when David Copperfield bought it several years ago. There is a fresh water pond on the island and someone comes a couple times a week to feed her. We always leave a big pile of Topaz kibbles when we’re here so he gave us two huge baggies of meat scraps for us to feed her the next day. When we left we passed it on to another boat to continue feeding her.
Back on Makai Topaz is living the good life at her all inclusive resort. She gets two square meals of kibble, many plates to lick, occasionally she manages to sneak a pancake or sandwich someone left unattended. She does have to put up with baths, haircuts, and nail trims, but the soft bed at night makes it all worth while.
That evening we got a new neighbor in our tiny anchorage. The owner and guests are gone so the crew went out snorkeling. Before dark they moved down the way a bit since it just didn’t seem safe to have a mega yacht anchor so close.
There is only one full day left for the Walters family and they didn’t want to go back to Georgetown, but when the wind clocks around from the north again, it’s time for Makai to sail south. We stopped to take on fuel in Emerald Bay along the way. Sixty-eight gallons used in six weeks, that’s pretty good. Back in Georgetown we found that some old friends had arrived. The girls love to visit with Colleen from Glass Slipper and we were all excited to see our friends on Rollick. We met them in Georgetown last year and then visited them in their home port of Baltimore, MD this summer. The crew was sorry to see the fishing trip come to an end, so I organized one last snorkel with Bernie and Andrea from Rollick. Marie agreed to babysit their 4 and 6 year old girls on Makai while we went to Bernie’s favorite reefs.
Jim and Patryk had gained confidence and improved their snorkeling and spear fishing skills over the last week. Ania provided the surface support in the dinghy and I like to swim around spotting delicious morsels or hazards. This reef was a little deep and the area is a little exposed to the open ocean swells which made the location a little more challenging. Patryk was the first to spot and retrieve a lobster. Then Jim came back with a world record sea monster of a lobster. Jim got a second and Roy got one too. Andrea and Bernie had a nice catch for their dinner as well. Just when we thought we would have to eat chicken for dinner, the fishermen came in with a nice catch. For their ten day visit only one meal was prepared without seafood. I opted out, but Jim and Patryk took over the galley in the preparation of sheep tongue curry on that evening.
After saying farewell to our guests we cleaned up the boat, scrubbed the cabins, moved the kids out of the captain’s cabin, did laundry and collected a list of groceries for our friends in the very remote Ragged Islands. We’re heading out to meet up with them first thing in the morning and then continuing on to Panama from there. I hope to have internet in a week or so and will try to post again at least once before we leave the Bahamas.
I’m sorry I posted twice in one day. Don’t miss Marie’s SCUBA post!