Double Breasted Cay, Ragged Islands, Bahamas

Back in internet range!! Over a week with no computer time was kinda nice!


For those of you that get my shortwave radio posts, this will be a repeat of some of the events, but this time with photos and videos.  We got anchored at the north end of Buena Vista Cay and pretty much immediately went snorkeling on some small coral heads nearby.

I saw an interesting shell on the bottom that looked like it might be vacant - so I asked Duane to dive down.

He brought it up, it was a beauty!

But it had a huge hermit crab in it, so it got released back to the ocean floor.

The weather has been hit and miss.  Often sunny but those "occasional showers" kept us closing hatches often.

We moved down to the south end of Buena Vista to be protected from some winds that were forecast.  But the weather at the time was settled and Duane got a good haul of lobsters.

Just lots of snorkeling and relaxing.

Cool ray - if you watch to the end you'll see it bury itself in the sand.

Pretty anchorage!

And lots of interesting coral.

More lobsters!

The other cruisers in the anchorage called on the VHF to organize and impromtu happy hour and bonfire on the beach.  Nice catching up with everyone's activities over the past few days.  Now & Zen joined us there from Georgetown.

The winds were forecast to be pretty large, so several of the local fishing boats anchored among the cruisers to wait it out.

Pretty rainbow in one of the showers.

You guys wonder where all the lobster goes?  Lobster cheese grits for my breakfast!

The two Mantas moved down to Racoon Cay, just south.  Found a pretty little bay to anchor.

Beautiful sunsets.

Saw this bull shark - he circled us a few times but didn't bother us.   Not great for spearing fish.....

And after the bull shark seemed to be gone, we were snorkeling over a small coral head.  This nurse shark (normally not aggressive)  was agitated and actually came up to the surface and approached Duane.  He tapped it on the nose with his spear and it swam away.  We decided we'd had enough shark encounters and swam immediately back to the dinghy.  No more fishing that day.

Had a couple of really nice bonfires with Now & Zen, including roasting of marshmallows!

Just a few on my finds from beachcombing.

And we had really cool encounter.  I saw what I thought was a huge dolphin surface and "blow".  I ran for the camera and caught this whale - really cool and amazing since the water there was shallow - maybe 5-6 feet.

The Bahamian Defense Force was trolling the area,   A Haitian boat had capsized a few weeks ago and unfortunately a few of our friends found two bodies.  So sad.

Now we're at Double Breasted Cay for a few days.  Should be a nice relaxing time.  Looking forward to What If's return from Georgetown once they receive their watermaker part.