Cambridge Cay
We had an early start today thinking we were leaving Warderick Wells at 7:00 AM. Heather had based the departure time on the wind and wave conditions, plus a high enough tide so our depth was good. We had to reassess based on tide levels at the cut out to the Exuma Sound. There is so much to consider! Conditions were a bit bouncy on the nose but generally good for our 9.6 mile run which took only about 1 1/2 hours. We anchored first, but moved to a mooring ball moments later when one became available. It was a good start to the day as we were settled and ready to explore by 9:00 AM.
There's so much to do here so we made a list. We started with the trail to Bell Rock. Trails around here are generally 5 to 10 minutes and this one came in at the lower end of the scale. The Bell Rock was named for its shape but a lot of it has
eroded away and it doesn't look much like a bell anymore but it was still impressive. We walked from one end of the beach to the other and collected as much beach garbage as each of us could carry and deposited it in a collecting area. The prevailing winds bring the world's garbage to the eastern shores of the Bahamas. We found a lot of single use travel size containers, like shampoo.
In the afternoon, we waited until it was close to high tide and then went over to Compass Cay to see Rachel's Bubblebath. It was about a 10 minute walk from the dinghy, and half of that was through ankle to knee deep water. We were drawn to the Bubblebath by the sounds of laughter. As the tide comes in, it crashes, or sometimes just flows, over the rocks into the large pool of water giving swimmers quite a ride at times. It wasn't too busy so we got lots of turns at the lip to enjoy the ride. Our dinghy ride back and forth across Conch Cut was a little bumpy, but not a bad ride.
The next day was very windy and we didn't leave the boat all day. It was still pretty windy Saturday morning, but after lunch we dinghied to Cambridge Cay on the south beach and did the 10 minute trail to Honeymoon Beach on the other side of the island. We had a great swim in the waves and then walked the beach a bit. We had it all to ourselves! We were
trying to figure out why it's called "Honeymoon" beach and we decided that it's sort of heart-shaped. Afterwards, we dinghied to find where the Sea Aquarium snorkel site was to see if it was calm. On the way, we checked out Johnny Depp's island, Little Halls Pond Cay, from a distance. We later learned that he sold it to J. K. Rowling. We also explored a great little cove at the north end of O'Brien’s Cay. We hurried back to get our snorkel gear. The extra trip was worth it as the Sea Aquarium was the best snorkelling we had to that point!
Samson Cay
Before starting this section, you should know a little about our name, Sea Clef. It comes from the musical clef, C clef. We are both amateur musicians and we wanted our name to reflect both of our interests with a nautical twist of "Sea" for "C". It is not a commonly used clef in music, like the Treble Clef (G Clef) or the Bass Clef (F Clef) so not many people are familiar with it. It is a fairly unique boat name and we are often mistakenly referred to as "Sea Cliff", "Sea Quest" or "Sea Chef". If you read our Chub Cay: Up the Creek without a Paddle blog, then you might have an idea of what's next.
Today would be our 100th day of travel on our Great Loop! We debated our destination for a while but settled on Samson Cay. We had wondered about staying at Compass Cay Marina and when Cam called the Harbour Master there, the Harbour Master was confused because Sea Clef was already there and the captain was right beside him. We knew about this other Sea Clef, which is 112 feet, but had never seen it. We told them we'd come by later to meet them. After a birthday phone call with Cam’s mom, we were underway. Our run was about 9-10 nautical miles and took about 1 1/2 hours. We anchored in a nice sheltered spot out in front of a closed marina. In the afternoon, we dinghied to Compass Cay and finally saw the other Sea Clef. The owner
was not there but the captain visited with us. Apparently, Karen, the boss, has a baby grand piano on their Sea Clef and she also plays a lot of other instruments. They named it Sea Clef because of the musical connection, like us. Karen also said that C moves around on the lines of the C Clef staff just as their boat moves around. We had never thought about it that way and we thought it was quite clever. We explored Compass Cay Marina before leaving. It turns out that you can swim with the nurse sharks here! Neither of us was interested but people seem to do it.
On our way back we looked for anchoring options for the windy weather coming up, and looked for somewhere to snorkel. We ended up snorkelling right by our boat. Cam saw a snapper and a grouper but wasn't able to spear either of them. Perhaps another day!
On Monday morning we made a grocery list and dinghied to Staniel Cay. There we got gas for the dinghy, as we were practically driving on fumes (although we still had a Jerry can).
Fuel was 6 feet up on a ladder so it was quite a lift of the tanks but Cam worked hard with the attendant to get the job done. Then we walked into town to two grocery stores. The shelves were pretty bare of produce and there was no bread. We managed to get lettuce and eggs, some frozen beef patties, gluten free wraps, and canned vegetables. We left Staniel Cay and dinghied over to Big Major where we found our friends on Will ‘n Joy. They invited us on board for a visit. At 12:30 Cam suggested we dinghy to Staniel
Cay for lunch. We had a great lunch and visit and enjoyed eating fresh vegetables. Lunch was about $100 for fish tacos, conch fritters, a salad and two drinks. Our groceries were about $100 and gas was $50. It was an expensive day but we hadn't been anywhere to spend money for several days! In fact, we hadn't gone grocery shopping for three weeks!
We headed back and dropped Will and Joy at their boat and collected our groceries. Back at our boat, Cam had a meeting while Heather dealt with the groceries. We learned a new trick from Joy. We cut away the top of the romaine lettuce, washed it, and put it in the refrigerator. Then we took the base of the lettuce and put it in an egg carton with water. Joy was doing this on their boat and growing new lettuce leaves quite successfully. She learned this trick from the locals. She said they are good to add to salads and helps defray the cost of lettuce a bit. Later, Will and Joy joined us at our boat for docktails. We made plans to join them at Big Major the next morning. Heather had a bit of heat stroke from the day so we had an early night.
Big Major
Last night was super still. The boat was hot and it seemed like it was full of no-seeums and they were biting! We were both up a lot and we even put bug repellent on to sleep. In the morning the water was so still that we could clearly see our anchor below us along with a couple of turtles and a stingray.
We pulled anchor and travelled just two nautical miles through a recommended, yet tight, route to Big Majors. We anchored just north of our friends, Will ‘n Joy. We joined them along with Richard and Thérèse from Red Rover, another Canadian Looper boat, and went over to the Thunderball Grotto just before low tide. This cave is well known as it was featured in the 1965 James Bond movie, Thunderball, as well as Splash and Into the Blue. Low tide is the time to do the Grotto as you have to swim under the entrance into a cave so lots of boats showed up at the same time. We had a bit of a tough time to get the three dinghies anchored. Finally, we swam over and took turns using the rope to find our way into the cave. Once inside you could see that it was teeming with fish of various sizes and colours and they were not afraid to come close to us. The ceiling of the grotto was pretty cool with some stallagtites and an opening to the sky. There were two other entrances to the cave: one was pretty tight and not recommended; and the other led to the far side of the island but you had to swim back into the cave in order to come out on the side where you left your dinghy.
After the grotto we all went to Pig Beach to see the swimming pigs. They were having feeding time, which meant they weren't begging us for food. There were lots of piglets that were so cute! Their keepers just put the food on the sand so the pigs must have been eating a lot of sand with their food. They were drinking lots of water from big buckets to wash it down. From there, we went to a beach just north of the pigs. There were chairs and a picnic table so we all sat and had a great visit for about an hour. After, we went off with Will and Joy to find a place to snorkel but we weren't successful. Will had a glass bottom bucket to help see through the water which was really useful. We ended up coming back to our boat for some hard earned rum!
On Wednesday, we dinghied with Will and Joy to a sunken plane and snorkelled there. A short swim from there we found a small coral head to snorkel. We tried to find other spots, but the water was too rough. We scoped out areas for anchoring before heading back to our boat. The supply ships were in the harbour so we went over to grocery shop after lunch. Everyone in the harbour seemed to have the same idea so it was crowded. There were crew members ahead of us shopping for one of the mega yachts and literally buying out the store of some items! It was a pretty successful provisioning, nonetheless. In the evening, we went to Will and Joy’s boat for homemade pizza! That was fun and delicious.
Thursday was a bit cooler for a change. In the afternoon we met Will and Joy in town and rented a golf cart to ride around the island. We had a great exploration of the island. Cam did all the driving and Will and Joy seemed content to ride in the back facing backwards. Some of the paths for the golf cart were pretty scary but Cam did a great job driving. We saw several
different views and walked a few trails. We found "Wilson" and some of his friends along one of the paths. You can see Wilson in our photos below. We stopped at The Flying Pigs Cafe by the airport for drinks, which was a nice break. Along the way, we got to an intersection and saw a sign that said "You are here. You can go this way or that way”, so we went this way and that way and all over the island. It was a fun and different day.
Click on the photos below to view the images in slideshow mode. Coming up next, our friends join us as we finish our time in Staniel Cay and head north again.
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