Tamed sting-rays at Chat’N’Chill beach

Wednesday 19 Feb, BHS day 50, George Town: Setting our departure day and small preparations for it, followed by afternoon drinks at Chat’N’Chill.

At breakfast we listen to the net as usual. It’s quite entertaining and on this particular occasion even useful. Someone is asking for a specific cruising guide for Central America, and we happen to have a brand new copy which we no longer need. So we agree on a sale, and by 11am we are up +$30 on the days expenditure (later eroded back to zero by beer drinking!).

We spend the morning looking at weather and planning our passage to Cayman. We have come to realise that leaving Bahamas will be very sad for us, and now we are actually planning a leaving day, the reality is settling in. As beautiful as Cayman islands are, on google-earth it just doesn’t look as blue as here. But we really have to break through the “chicken barrier” here. George Town has this name because apparently most North American cruisers are “too chicken” to go south from here, into the unknown!
The weather shows that Saturday there is a huge cold front coming in from the north. If we wait to depart after this, the seas will still be big and the wind back to trades (that is: against us). If we leave just before the weather front and manage to stay ahead of it, we should get 10-15kt following winds all the way to Cayman. Maybe even some spinnaker runs. So with current forecast we will depart midday Friday, planning for the front not to catch up with us.
With a 4-day passage coming up I have a few jobs to do. First is to check the grab bags. Checking the VHF batteries, spare torch batteries, and topping up our small motorcycle battery using the tiny solar panel we recently purchased. This battery will be used in the life raft for recharging phones, VHFs and IridiumGo.

Mid-afternoon we are off again to Chit’N’Chat beach where some people will be talking about “heading south”. We presume beyond the chicken zone 🙂 Thought it might be interesting but turns out the first speaker is presenting his experience of the longest passage he ever made: 3 days to Turks & Caicos on a catamaran, and he makes it sound like the adventure of a lifetime. We soon tune out and settle for just observing the crowd.
After a few minutes of not really paying much attention, we defer to visiting the tame sting rays on the beach, next to the conch shack. People are actually holding their hands out in the water with small pieces of conch and the rather large rays, with their rather large stingy tails are swimming up and taking the food. Amazing. So I try it. Sure enough a ray swims up and as my hand disappears under its flat body, I hold my nerve until it sucks the food off my hand into its mouth. Now that was an experience. Never heard of a tame sting ray before.
The rest of the afternoon is sitting under the shady trees, sipping beers and chatting with Ian and Michelle. Talking a lot about the Atlantic crossing to Europe. Looks like I’m fully signed up now!

Just before sunset we are back on board for dinner, while a Hallberg Rassy 38 is anchoring right on our stern. Rather close really, but as he is behind us I don’t complain. And just as I tell Oana “better there than squeezed beside us” they up anchor and do just that, anchor very close right beside us. Well, let’s see how that goes. Luckily, the wind forecast is for the wind to be light and stable in one direction. So I don’t complain to them, especially when I see the poor guy has to lift his anchor by hand.
At sunset there is the usual blowing of conch shells up and down the anchorage (they sound like a horn, if blown properly). And the 2 small kids on the HR38 next to us are blowing theirs better than anybody. What a great life to be a young kid living almost care free on a boat with your parents and brothers and sisters. And here in this anchorage there seem to be lots of families like this, their kids all playing together on the beach after their day of being home schooled.

In the evening Oana works again on video editing. We have several GB of data balance on our Bahamas SIM card, so we really want to use that for another video upload. The images on these Exuma videos are stunning, but we also feel that they appear somewhat boring after viewing multiple dinghy rides and not much action otherwise. And we have hundreds of video clips yet to edit. We hope, as usual, that the finished product surprise us, pleasantly.