Friday 24 Jan, BHS day 25: From Warwick Wells Cay to O’Brien’s Cay, still angry sky. Snorkeling over a drug-running plane wreck and The Aquarium.
Another day starting with sunshine and showers. This really feels like trade wind weather now. After breakfast we try to fly the drone. We wait patiently for almost an hour, trying to anticipate when any small patch of blue sky will actually pass over the sun. At the same time, it’s a bit gusty. The wind is anything from 9 to 21kts. But we’ve flown in similar winds before. At last the sun looks like it will emerge so I go for a takeoff.
Usually, as soon as the drone has lifted I head it away from the boat. But this time it just wouldn’t move to the left, and drifts over towards the boom. Nothing I could do but to grab it. Ouch! The spinning little blades cut hard into my finger tips and then my leg! Bugger, that bloody hurt. Now I know why Oana was screaming with pain when she got whacked trying to catch it last year. Those little blades are vicious! But at least the drone was saved and doesn’t seem to be damaged. And to be safe I announce all further drone flight attempts are duly canceled for today!
So instead, we slip the mooring and get on our way, out of Warderick Well channels, heading into general direction of Cambridge Cay, some 6 miles south. We decide to take the calmer Exumas Bank western route because the swell is still up in deep water on the eastern side. Once out of the cut the sails are out and we are nicely hard on the SE wind doing a healthy 7kts on flat sea. We just wish the sun was out to improve the colours, as we video Cloudy slicing through the turquoise water that is just 5m deep.
Unfortunately, 20 minutes into the sail, the wind backs 40degrees and our heading changes to SW, away from our destination, but we keep on sailing for another 3 miles then furl the sails away and motor upwind and into Conch Cut.
We have decided to first anchor next to O’Brien’s Cay, where there are interesting snorkeling sites, before heading to Cambridge Cay tomorrow. So we exit Conch Cut into the rather narrow channel on the west side of Bell Island. The channel itself is deep and pretty clearly seen by the colour of the water. But the north end, into Bell Island Cut, there is an extremely narrow part between rock and reef. Barely 25ft wide! We are kind of getting used to these depth challenges 🙂
After very slowly passing through that, we cross Bell Island Cut and back into the shallows the other side, where we are surprised to hit the sandy bottom with a bit of a thud! Odd, because we never saw less than 3.3m on the depth instrument. Maybe we ran into a whale? Or more likely just a small sharp bump in the sand bank.
From there it’s straight forward and soon we are anchored just outside the tide channel, and nicely tucked in behind O’Brien’s Cay, next to another sloop from Canada. We almost feel like apologizing for disturbing their solitary anchorage.
The surroundings are wonderful. I can’t wait to go snorkeling at the famous drugs-plane crash site and also The Aquarium site, both within 200m of us. So we are soon in the dinghy. First stop is the Aquarium, which has several good comments on Active Captain. Conveniently there are 2 small mooring buoys to tie your dinghy to – so it must be a popular site. In the water I’m instantly surrounded by hundreds of colourful and very inquisitive fish. They come so close, but if you reach out they just manage to keep out of reach. Clearly they are used to being fed by humans and not hunted, for once. Incidentally, this Exumas national park has a strict “no-take” policy. Meaning absolutely no fishing or taking anything from the natural environment. There should be more places like this. The small reef is nothing to shout about but the fish are really not to be missed. Sadly, the sun is hiding, so the light was not so good.
From the Aquarium we tootle around Soldier Cay which has a few small houses on and some very sandy shallow areas with pristine white beaches. Then back to the small mooring buoy over the plane wreck. It’s interesting, being our first snorkel on an aircraft, but after the initial unique view there is not much to see in the way of life. The plane, what looks like a small single engined Cessna, is lying upside down with its tail missing and no doors to the cabin. I dive down hoping to find a large grouper at the controls. But alas, the cabin is empty.
We then go back to Cloudy, hoping the sun will be out tomorrow, to make better snorkeling.
The rest of the evening is very peaceful and we continue to edit videos. Two more are ready for uploading. We just need some good WiFi internet to make that happen!