Thursday 30 Jan, BHS day 31: From Bell Island to Norman’s Cay, via Hawksbill Cay.
Surprisingly, we wake to clear skies. The forecast was for heavy rain at 7am. But the wind is spot-on, west 10-15kts. Perfect for our 16nm sail north, to Norman’s Cay, which is famous for previously being the hangout of Pablo Escobar, the drugs dealer.
Anchor is up after breakfast and we are soon out the cut into deeper water with the sails out. The apparent wind is slightly in front of the beam so we keep the main 1/3 furled, hence we don’t lean too much in the gusts that are coming off the Exumas Cays on our port side. We are doing a nice 7kts in the flat sea. Champagne sailing. And, best of all, we are running along the line of the drop-off where the best fishing is.
So the line is out and it doesn’t take long for our first bite. Bzzzzz goes the reel. With the sheets eased to slow us down, we reel it in. This one is a real fighter. Usually they fight for 5 minutes or so then I can bring them in. But this one is diving down deep and pulling very very hard. Finally it seems to get tired and comes much easier. But as we get it near and bring it on board we only have half a fish! Not for the first time, those pesky sharks or barracudas have stolen our dinner. In fact, we marvel at how the shark (or whatever the predictor was ) manages to take the entire fish from the head backwards (all the best bits!) and never get the hook itself. There’s more to those sharks than we think! And the way the fish is so cleanly severed, including clean through its backbone which I normally struggle to cut, you realise the power and sharpness of the jaws and teeth that did this. With just the head left it’s hard to see what the fish type is, or rather was. Needless to say, once off the hook it goes back in the sea and the lure and line are straight back in. And within a minute bzzzz off it goes again. But this time, as soon as I lock the reel, the line goes slack and the fish is gone – off the hook – as they say. Then for the next hour, no more fish are biting. It must have just been a very prolific patch of reef we were previously sailing over.
As we pass by Hawksbill Cay we see it has very long white beaches on this coast. In fact,, Hawksbill east coast was one of my selected anchorages for the last strong wind. But we had instead gone to Warderick Wells. So I’m rather keen to go take a look at it. “We’ll anchor there for a quick coffee” I tell Oana.
As we come towards the beach we are in beautiful colour water again. We’ve said “beautiful water” so many times in the last few blogs, but this water seems to beat them all. And to capture it, the drone goes into the air. Twice in fact (landing only for a battery change). We just cannot get enough of the image from the air. And the video and photos capture it perfectly for once ( usually we are disappointed by the actual drone image, once downloaded).
Pretty happy with our coffee stop, mid-afternoon we move on again. And as soon as we are in deep water the line goes out again. I’m determined to catch dinner today. Nothing bites for quite a while until I call out to the sea, “come on all you fishes, we have a tasty little dinner in tow for you”. And the very instant I end my sentence, the line goes bzzzzzz! I knew I had a talent for talking to sea life! Maybe I’m related to Dorey? 🙂
Anyhow, this fish comes in pretty easily. But it looks like a barracuda (which we don’t eat due to siguetera toxins). So we are actually quite glad when he too “gets off the hook” just at the moment I was about to bring it on board. Ok, enough of fishing for the day. It will have to be plan-B for the dinner menu – pasta.
As we approach the cut at the south end of Norman’s Cay, we can see the channel has lots of boats at anchor. We gently go in, weaving our way between the usual coral reefs and sand bars, and anchor among the crowd. That will have to do till we find somewhere more secluded tomorrow. But I will admit that we did re-anchor twice before I was totally happy (and Oana making it very clear she was not doing it for a third time!). I wanted to be as clear as possible from other boats so I can sleep through tide changes without worrying about collisions as we swing.
After dinner we venture ashore around sunset. Pete and Tracy had mentioned a good bar to visit, that also has good WiFi. The island has a new marina and resort in the process of development. Like so many such developments in the Caribbean, it has stalled several times since initial work 12 years ago. Currently it’s back in the process of restarting construction. We enter the marina in the dinghy. It all looks nice and new, but only 3 boats on the dock.
To get to the bar we have to walk around the new runway that was recently extended since Escobar’s time. The runway looks good enough to land a commercial jet! But there are only 2 small light aircraft on the apron. We end up getting a lift to the restaurant by a worker in a golf buggy, only to find that it’s closed on Thursdays! Our timing, as usual, is not ideal. Maybe we’ll try again tomorrow. We kind of wanted the good WiFi to upload our latest YouTube videos. Plus, we are desperate for internet after having hardly any gsm signal over the last week.
It’s dark by the time we get back to Cloudy. She has swung nicely to the new tide direction and doesn’t look to have dragged at all. Our evening is the usual social media editing and some banking. I haven’t paid off our Visa card for nearly 3 weeks now and I’m shocked to see it’s only $500 owing. That has to be a record low. I love these islands! Beautiful and nothing to spend your money on – a true paradise 🙂
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