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May 21, 2016 –
Saturday – Jessica Arrives!
It was a long morning of waiting for Jessica to arrive at
the Staniel Cay Airport. We killed some
time by working on the cockpit seat that Bill had installed earlier for
fishing. The seat worked but not well
and some additional parts needed to be installed so the seat would close
easier. What was thought (by Bill) to be
a short job ended up being a very long and complicated job (as usual). In order for the seat to slide in and open
easier some plastic slides needed to be installed. This meant moving the seat about a ½ inch
toward the wall of the boat. When we did
that, the seat now hits on the outside of the side step. This is definitely a problem and not
acceptable. Thus it took Bill about an
hour or more to figure out how to fix the problem, move the cabinet slightly
and then reattach the seat. Meanwhile I
had to keep holding up the seat, which was very heavy so he could keep checking
the measurements. After all of that, we
ran out of time so we went to Staniel Cay to meet Jessica without finishing the
seat. The seat is re-hung but the slides
to make it open easier which was the original project is still incomplete.
Jessica finally arrived right on time. It was great to see her! Jessica said that they did not go into Black
Point as the schedule indicated, but came directly from Nassau. She got a kick out of taking the golf cart to
the marina and then our tender to Compass Cay Marina which is about 7 miles
away. She immediately loved the water
colors and the adventure. Upon arriving
back at the boat we all took a swim behind the boat and enjoyed the
“aquarium-like” adventure and the nurse sharks.
Staniel Cay Airport - Flamingo Air |
Sunday, May 22 – Day
26
Today we took Stewart over to a sandy island on the southern
end of the Land & Sea Exuma National Park and let him run. To our surprise, Stew found the sun quite hot
and decided that he was not interested in a flat out run today, walking was
just fine. He even decided to cool his
feet in the water. For those readers who
are not aware, Stew hates water and never thrilled with getting wet so this was
quite a surprise.
After a few minutes at Stew beach we headed over to
Rachael’s Bubble Bath on the northern end of Compass Cay. We walked the creek to Rachael’s and enjoyed
a cool swim.
Monday, May 23 – Day
27
What a great day of fishing.
The seas were calm and in about an hour and a half we had 2 Blackfin
Tuna and 2 large Dolphin (Mahi).
Black Tuna |
Dolphin (Mahi Mahi) |
Tuesday, May 24 – Day 28
Morning we headed to Staniel to get fuel for both the Marlin
Striker and the tender. After that we
headed out of Staniel to do a little more fishing. This was not a very fishy day for dolphin or
tuna. We could not find a bird in sight
and the seas were beginning to get rougher.
So after a couple of hours we headed in closer to shore to go after some
Barracuda. The barracuda make great bait
for deep drop fishing which we hope to do in Abaco with our friends Glenn and
Laurie. We had great success. Jessica caught her first barracuda.
Wednesday, May 25 –
Day 29
Today was off in the morning to the Sea Aquarium. After the sea aquarium we went over to check
out the caves. These caves you have to
swim underwater to get into them. The
wind and waves were pushing directing into the opening of the caves so Bill
decided he would check it out before we all got in. To his surprise it was not the waves that
sent him back to the boat, but an about seven (7) foot barracuda that was
guarding the entrance. Given the
circumstances we decide to try the caves another day and returned to Rachael’s
once again. Today the ocean waves were
rolling right into Rachael’s so we thought it would be a little more
interesting for Jessica. She enjoyed the
“bubbles” and crashing waves.
After some threatening afternoon thunderstorms we headed
back over to the caves for another try.
This time the tide was very low and there were many rocks showing along
with the easterly wind and waves rolling into the entrance. Tomorrow is another day and that may prove a
better and safer experience.
Thursday, May 26 –
Day 30
The wind is still quite strong out of the east so we gave up
on going to the caves again this morning.
We had a restful, quiet morning which bored Jessica but there was not
much else we could do as we planned on leaving Compass Cay late morning and
moving to Staniel Cay Yacht Club (Marina) for her last couple of nights. Although we called to see if our slip was
vacant before we left Compass, we ended up waiting over an hour idling once we
arrived at Staniel. While waiting for
some people who had decided to pull in and go to the bar for the afternoon, we
topped off our fuel and unloaded our tender.
Once we finally got our slip, we immediately headed over to Big Major
with the tender to “feed the pigs”.
Jessica loved the swimming pigs.
Sea Aquarium between Soldier Cay and O'Brien Cay |
Big Major - Swimming Pigs |
Friday, May 27 – Day
31
This was a full day of going back to Rocky Dundas caves. The weather and seas were perfect today for
this adventure. We then cruised back
to Bitter Guana Cay where we got a lot
of laughs watching the iguanas. These
are the endangered Cayman iguanas which now only exist in the Bahamas.
Bitter Ghana Cay - Iguana Beach |
Saturday, May 28 –
Day 32
Jessica leaves to go back to New Hampshire at 8:50 AM and we
are head to Hurricane Hole Marina in Nassau.
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