Northern Phoenix blog

We anchored between the majors, Little Major and Big Major.  two islands near Stanial Cay,  Good wind and wave protection.

Feb 11 and 12

Staniel is an interesting Cay, more like how I expected Bahamian civilization to be like. The community is completely dependent on tourism of course, and even has its own airport- if it can be called that. The stores and shops seem barely large enough to support the island. And, like all Bahamian places, they bought out the paint isle when building the houses. You could find pretty much every color house, from blue to yellow to orange to purple.

 

Which brings me to what we did today. We left around lunch and motored over to Cambridge, where he hiked a small ways through the trees to the beach on the other side, where there was a very fantastic wall of rock to climb on. In fact, Dad thought the rocks looked so much like they would in New Zealand that he got us to redo a scene from Lord of the Rings. Needless to say, Devon tripped and fell and generally made a fool of himself, so we will see how the video turned out.
  

 After running- not actually, since if we attempted to do so, I can think of two people off the top of my head in the family who would immediately fall on their face-around on the rocks and cliffs for an hour, we headed back to the boat and proceeded to get it ready for the coming storm. Oh, and had steak for diner. I feel it is my duty to record whenever we have such feasts.  

Feb 8

 Yesterday we unanchored (apparently this is a word as its not coming up with a red squiggle like so many of my others [actually this isn’t true; you are more likely to see blue lines than anything due to my extreme dislike of the apostrophe key]) and headed down to the southern tip of Warderick Wells, where we re-anchored among the company of some other sailboats and a trimaran- basically a catamaran with 3 hulls.

Since this part of the island is still part of the park, it had trails going from beach to beach through the sparse vegetation. We decided that it was in our best interests to explore these trails, with our end destination at a place called Pirates Lair on the other side of the island. I might add that we never made it this far, due to the very unclear trail markings on Bush Basher trail. The trails were unlike any we have gone on so far- which is not a lot, but still-, since there is very little dirt on the islands, and for most of the trails there was no sand. In fact, the trails went over limestone rock, which had been eroded over time by water so it was all jagged and uneven. Also, to add to the difficulty of traveling over this terrain, there were large wells along the path, 2 meters in diameter and 10 meters deep, from what our rock throwing could decipher. And let’s not forget the poison wood growing alongside the trails, recognizable by its grey and orange bark and dark green leaves. Poison wood is a tree which is not unlike poison ivy, with all parts of it capable of giving out a very irritating rash on contact; however, the rash is about 5 times worse. Thankfully, no one had the misfortune of touching it.

Eventually we got to a beach, where we started up what was to be our last attempt at the journey. We hadn’t even been walking for 5 minutes before we started losing the trail, and eventually we had to admit defeat and head back to the beach for lunch. Because really, that was pretty much the main point of this trip, to have a picnic type lunch, which was made doubly awesome since some thoughtful person had thought to bring cookies.

 

The next day we left Warderics not so early in the morning, and suffered through a very very hot trip down to Pasture Cay. Near Pasture is an island called Little Hall Pond Cay- they were just stringing together words with this name. I mean really. I know there are a lot of islands in the exumas to name, but surely you can come up with something better than that.-which is owned by Johnny Depp (aka “Captain” Jack Sparrow, in Pirates of the Caribbean). You aren’t allowed to go on the island, at least that’s what we are assuming, and it has 3 wifi signals. Proof that some rich guy owns it.
 

We attempted to snorkel around some rock that was in front of our boat in the afternoon….. One second, I just had an important update from Mom who happens to be sitting beside me at the present time. It seems that LHP Cay actually has 6 wifi signals, which were discovered after scrolling down the list a ways. Anyway, back to snorkeling. We saw some fish, however none were exceptionally large or spectacular. Then we saw the 6 foot wide, 10 foot long- tail included- Spotted Eagle Ray. It was exceptionally large and spectacular, however the giant beaked face was a little disconcerting. Somehow mom didn’t notice it until it was like 4 feet away, even with all the pointing and shouting that was going on (it was our first large ray that we had seen while in the water, so we found it exciting).However I think we managed to get a decent picture of it, though I’m not sure the picture really managed to catch the size of it well.

By Sahara
Feb 6

We arrived at Warderick Wells, coming from Hawksbill Cay. Warderwick Wells is known for having some of the best snorkeling in the world; and the best in the Bahamas. So today we are going to check out some of the reefs. Warderick Wells is also the main island in the nature park- another reason for the great reefs- so it has trails all throughout the island. One of them leads up to a large hill, Boo Boo Hill.
 
The name- which I think sucks, and they should come up with a new one, because it defiantly would be within their power to do so- comes from the lore of the hill, which is that long ago, a ship crashed into the hill, leaving no survivors and no bodies. They say that if you climb the hill at night, you can still hear the ghosts singing hymns or something like that. Anyway, Boo Boo Hill overhangs the shore. Since it is hollow underneath, the water rushes in, forcing air (and water at high tide) up though holes in the rocks. These are called blowholes. However, the holes are small- maybe 6-10 inches in diameter- so you can’t do anything overly stupid with them, such as jumping in them or hanging or trying to fly on the wind it shoots up.
 

After discovering this remarkable feat of nature, we headed back to the beach, and from there to the boat, and from there snorkeling. However, since we didn’t go on a reef, it wasn’t very exciting, and all we saw was a barracuda and a lobster. 

   Fish & Snorkeling
By Deovn

Yesterday, we decided to go the reef at warderick wells. At first, we got into our dinghy with the new 15 horsepower engine and rode up to the very beginning of the reef, when we were there we put on our flippers and got ready. After we got ready, dad said he will tow the dinghy. We now drifted down the reef with the current. After a while I saw some really big bar jacks and I started chasing them, I actually almost caught one but I fell behind as it turned into the current, so I stopped. At some points, it was so shallow that you had to stay still or else I would have gotten stuck in the coral. At some point later Sahara claimed that she saw a 3 feet long barracuda and even in the current it was barely moving, she also saw a large Atlantic spiny lobster and it was also cool, hiding in the little crevice in a rock, I was thinking “if I had a nice furry mop, I could get it out, but no! I just have to not have a mop in hand!

 

  we headed back up to Highborne Cay, where we had planned to visit with our friends the Morrison’s.
  

 And, since almost the entire eastern side of the island is beach… to go and claim it. And it was awesome, because no one was on this amazingly soft-sanded beach. The water was a warm 76 degrees F (which is roughly some number above 0 in Celsius), which made us think of how everyone back home must be freezing what with all the snow and ice. I’m kidding; actually, no thought was spared for our fellow Canadians. Anyway, we spent the majority of the rest of the afternoon in the water, or in the case of the parents, sitting on the beach. We had brought body boards, so that was also awesome, since the waves were 3-4 feet high- or the larger ones.  And from looking through these pictures, I just realized how tanned we are, and we still have 4 months to go.

 

  

After everyone managed to get sufficiently burned, we headed back to the boats where we had an amazing diner of stone crab claws, lobster, and chicken. We also managed to devote a bit of our camera time to sunsets… I think in the 10 minutes we went for a walk we successfully got at least 5 times that many pictures. Because, you know, it changes every 7 seconds. Yes, I might have exaggerated.

The next day we left Highborne, and headed down to Normans Cay for a change in scenery. Again, like all islands in the Bahamas- seeing as we have seen nothing that contradicts this, it is what we believe to be true- it had great beaches. However, it wasn’t as exciting as Highborne, mainly due to the lack of waves and such. Again, had another great dinner that night, and managed to successfully get Aaron to agree to us buzz-cutting his hair. 
.   

The other day we all went to a reef and it was a quick ride because dad gave us a tow with our dinghy. We all hung on to a tow line to do it. On the way there, we also saw a whole bunch of coral and sand dollars.
   
 At first, when we got off the dinghy, Sahara started yelling Lion fish! Lion fish!
 
At this point we all knew that lion fish were red, white and black with a whole bunch of spines. But lion fish are invasive species and they are bad for the reef because they crowd out the other fish. We didn’t do anything to them because if we got too close we would get poisoned because of the poisonous spines all over its body and that would be bad. So we just swam away to see some other fish. The next fishes that we saw were huge schools of fish which were probably grunts and Barjacks.
   
 We took some pictures of those and moved on and we saw a very pretty fish which Sahara identified as a triggerfish, and she was right (wow).
 
 The trigger fish was a blue green fish with lots of cool designs on it including yellow streaks coming out of its eyes and two big fins that they swim with. It was hard to get good pictures of it because it always bolted when we got close to it, it also swam around us and followed us whenever we swam away from it. After a couple minutes of trying to take pictures of it, Sahara and mom swam back to the boat and dad and I motored. I wanted to get towed so dad went full blast on the engine-which was a bad idea.
  
 I nearly got drowned because the water scooped right over my head and I couldn’t speak, but I managed to yell at him to stop the motor. We finally got back to the boat and it was a very refreshing trip, because it was a hot day and I hope we do it again.
  





 

Jan 27, 28, 29

Today we headed down to a larger cay, Shroud Cay. The water was so clear heading over, that at 18 feet you could count the blades of grass at the bottom. Of course, the whole of the Bahamas are like this, but we still are getting used to the fact. It's a bit discomforting when it looks like it is only 5 feet, even if the depth sounder is reading higher than 15.
So, anyway, Shroud Cay. It's the largest Cay we've gone to, however most of it is swampy mangroves.

  

 Today was very hot, sooo we decided to try to kayak down a creek type thing and see if we come out on the other side of the island. It was a mile and a half long trip, and it was very hot. I think I already mentioned that. Yes, I see I did. However now I've gone too far and don't want to go back and correct, so I will just continue. We did eventually come out at the sea, where we beached the kayaks and admired the very fast 5 knot current. It was pretty impressive. So we jumped in and tried to see who could float the farthest down. It was quite deep in the channel, and it was up against a rock cliff, so we had to watch out for that. However there was no wind, so there were no waves really.

 
 
 
still much worse than it should be. This conversation eventually turned into people should become cannibals, as it would stop the hunger and the weight problem overnight. I for one support this... After this, we had to go back to the boat, against the current, for we had a sudden urge to have steak for diner. And no matter how strong the current, the need for steak will always overcome.

  


Day 2
The next day we motored over to another beach on Shroud Cay. Basically it was a beach with a rocky cliff behind it. Wasn't the best beach we've gone to, in terms of excitement. However the rocks were fun to climb.
Sadly, this beach was also littered- ironically- with trash. Including this high class chair that we managed not to break by sitting on it. 


  

 

The water was so still, and just the right color blue, that the ocean and the sky almost seemed to merge together. Pretty cool. That's another thing with this too clear, too still water. When looking off the side of the boat, its hard to tell where the water starts... 

Normans Cay Jan 25 and 26
Day 1

We anchored off the west coast of the southern tip of Normans cay with a few other Canadian boats.  Amazing the percentage of Canadian boats we see.At LEAST 25% of all the boats we see are Canadian.  They understand getting away from winter!

Although hard to see in the pictures, all the islands are different.Not huge differences, but each unique.  This place had a rocky (old coral) like beach.  The rocks for fun to climb around.  NOT slippery at all.  There is no algae or slime growing on the rocks like in the good old Chesapeake bay.
 

Sahara found a huge conch shell and Devon found a long sponge with a hole in it, just right for his finger.  Both smelled like low tide in the morning.
 


Day 2
We moved our anchor to the middle of the island in the Cut.  Cuts are places that go between the ocean(east side) and the banks (West side).  With a 3 foot tide, they can get some fast currents.  Although after the ICW and Georgia, not that strong.
We went on a dingy trip out across the middle of the island.  Look on google earth and you can see the big flat area in the southern end and a deep "pond" area to the north.  We were going to try and make it to the pond but got side tracked.  We left at low tide and had to pull the boat for part of the trip....we meaning forced labor children.
  

We did find a King Helmet Conch.  Very pretty shell.
 

Hard to explain how beautiful this area was.  All the water is different shades of bright blue depending on depth and if there is any sea grass under it or coral rocks.  But all is crystal clear.  The beaches are all bright white fine coral sand beaches.  Extremely soft.
To give an idea, the picture of Sahara jumping is a small area.  In the background you can see where we came through with the dingy.  Where she jumped from is only a few inches of water.  Where she lands was over her head and her feet never hit the bottom!!!  You have to get used to which color of blue is which depth.  Then adjust for the sun...shadow form clouds or not....grass bottom or not....and then you can judge how deep the water is.   Strong currents flow through here with the tides and dig out canals and holes and scour around the rocks.  A great place to explore, kayak, and swim.  Oh, and not another person to be scene!!!
Neat trees and vegetation.  It is hard to walk around in the trees.  The coral rocks are very sharp on top and with out shoes is impossible.  So we stayed in the sandy areas.  A flying monkey and a cool gnarled old tree.

  

The expression "A hard nut to crack" is not good enough.  A better expression would be "A hard Conch to extract" is way better.  And even harder when your children say "Dad, save the shell".  A lot of work, a big mess.