Flamingo Cay, Jumentos then Hog Cay, Ragged Islands

We're back in limited cell range again, a little unexpectedly.


We arrived at Flamingo Cay in the Jumentos after a 24 hour sail, uneventful and almost entirely on sail power, so almost no precious diesel was expended!

Beautiful anchorage all to ourselves.

 We hopped in the dinghy with Ralph and Leslie and went for a little exploring.  There is a small cave that you can go inside with the dinghy.

Pretty cool little cave.

Went wading for some conch.  (Conch salad later, yum!)

Pretty little islets.

Then it was a walkabout to the other side of the island.

A lot of the terrain is the limestone - glad we wore good shoes!

Neat cactus in bloom.

Beautiful deserted beach on the north side of the island. (No one lives on this island).

On our way back to the boat we passed two catamarans that had just arrived in the next little bay.  We stopped by and invited the crews from Shiloh and Alleycat to come over to "our" beach for snacks, sundowner drinks and a bonfire.

Our makeshift table - made out of "looky buckets" and a dock board we carry.

The sunset was spectacular!

We had piled up firewood during our earlier walkabout.

Enjoyable evening!

The next day, we went for a snorkel/fishing trip to a lovely little reef.

Ralph diving.

And Duane on the hunt!

Duane speared two lobster!

And two lion fish. (Lion fish are invasive non-native fish that we are encouraged to kill on sight).

Here is the haul - the lionfish is on the right - we have heard they are delicious so we decided to try it.  Duane carefully trimmed the poisonous spines with shears and filleted.

Back to the beach to clean everything including the conch from yesterday - a messy job!

You can see a mono-hull in anchored farther out behind us- that is Synergy, a Baba 40 from the DC area with two couples on board.  We met them and invited them for the bonfire on the beach again - and to dinner onboard Sojourn.

A good time as always with cruisers!

And believe it or not, we all fit at the table for dinner!  Hope to run into these fun folks again.

Today we sailed about 40 miles south to Hog Cay.  Ralph and Leslie have a broken part on their boat so needed to find some cell service to order the part.  Happily, there happens to be a little cruiser's party scheduled for tomorrow at this beach. 

This area was particularly hard hit by hurricane Irma.  There is a "cruisers hut" that was built on the deserted beach apparently a few years ago with funds/materials from the government.  But we've heard that the area was so destroyed in the hurricane that the government has sortof given up on any help.  So the cruisers themselves are repairing the roof.

There are about 12 boats in the harbor - the most we've seen since early January so it feels sortof crowed....we were invited ashore to meet everyone and plan tomorrow's menu.  A local lady, Maxine, is going to bring 2 goats tomorrow morning to roast and the cruisers are all going to bring a dish to share.

Our good buddy from Oriental - Donna from BlueJacket is an organizer.

We didn't have any paper so we used the back of a seagrape leaf to write down what everyone was going to bring tomorrow.  Should be a fun little gathering.  That's it for now!