Whale Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas

Another fabulous day!

Ralph had a beach spot he wanted to check out a few miles away.  So we all got in the dinghies and headed over.
 


Ralph and Leslie.

Robert and Linda from Voyager.

Beautiful shallow "flats".

Getting water shoes on.

Ralph and Leslie.

Robert and Linda.

Leslie took this photo for me.

 We all wandered around, picking up pretty shells. 

Robert propped his Iphone in the sand and took this time-delay photo of the group.

 Back to the boats in the early afternoon.

We had a nice evening meal with the 3 couples on Now & Zen.

And Voyager left this morning to go north into the Berries.  We'll head south to Morgan's Bluff, Andros this afternoon.   We'll likely run into Voyager again sometime.

Whale Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas

Had a very busy day yesterday!

We took the dinghies for a long ride out to the southern end of Whale Cay where we had seen a reef  on the navigation chart. 

We found it and enjoyed it - but it was not really all that special.  I guess we're spoiled!  Fun though.

Leslie and Ralph getting ready to drop anchor at the reef.

Pretty coral, clear water.

At the tip of Whale Cay there is an abandoned lighthouse.

So we pulled the dinghies over to the beach and went for a little walk.

The lighthouse path/road.  Clearly this was an active area long ago.

But inside is almost rubble.

View from inside what appears to be the "keeper's room".

View of the ocean to the south.  This is where we were snorkeling earlier out where the light blue meets the darker blue.

View to our anchorage, Duane walking down the path.

And then we snorkeled a small sunken barge.  Plenty of fish.  Fun for a few minutes.

 And then back to the boats.

Later Ralph flew his drone and got this fabulous shot of both our boats!  (Sojourn on the left and Now & Zen on the right).

Later we invited the crew of Voyager (Robert and Linda) over for sundowners (and Leslie & Ralph, of course).  Fun evening.

Berry Islands, Bahamas

Not much happening! We did chores yesterday.  Duane replaced a faulty bilge pump, I did laundry and caked cookies....dinner on Now & Zen.  Another beautiful sunset!

Bird Cay/Whale Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas

We had a lovely overnight sail to the Berry Islands.  We were off at about 3AM, arrived at Bird Island about 3:30PM.  The winds were perfect, we started with a reefed main because the winds were gusty.  The prediction was for 30 knot gusts but the largest I saw as about 27.  Midway thru the morning we shook the reef out and put up all the sails to take advantage of the wind. 

Caught our first Mahi Mahi - it was pretty exciting because we had fish on both poles at the same time.  We were sailing at about 7 knots when the fish hit and we needed to get the boat slowed down to pull them in.  To do that, we have to pull in all the sails and then point directly into the wind so that we're not "sailing" anymore.   We did it and somehow managed to get both the fish on the boat (usually in this instance we lose at least one of the fish because it takes a good amount of time and the seas are usually pretty bouncy).

I got my fish onboard first and just flopped it in the cockpit.

Duane had to struggle with his a long time because it had some seaweed tangled in the line making it really heavy to reel in.  Good fun and good eating!

Had a great meal with Now & Zen - early bedtime!

Bimini, Bahamas

The seaplanes use the channel right beside where we're anchored.  Kinda cool to watch them come/go.

Bimini, Bahamas

Nothing much happening today....pretty sunrise.  I believe we'll be heading out this evening for an overnight sail to either Chub Cay or Andros....depends on the analysis of the winds later this morning.

Gun Cay to Bimini, Bahamas

We went for another snorkel in the morning, then stopped by a dock on the east side of Gun Cay where there was a group of rays swimming.  Here's a short video - I'm standing in waist deep water and the rays are just swimming around, looking for food that some folks are handing out (shrimp bits).  They swim up against you with their soft under-bellies.   Really weird feeling.

 And then a small nurse shark appeared....harmless (I hear).....

But our time on Gun Cay was limited - there will be some high winds tomorrow that we need protection from, so we sailed back to Bimini. 

Fished the whole way but not even a nibble!

Approaching Bimini.

Instead of paying for a marina, we are anchored in the protected north end of the island near an empty mega-yacht marina at the huge Hilton.

For dinner tonight, I made a cheesecake - first time on the boat.  It turned out good but the bottom scorched just a bit.  I have to tweak the small oven....

And Ralph pulled out a bottle of bubbly as a treat.  Another fun day.

Gun Cay, Bahamas

I had a couple of bananas that were past their prime, almost to the point that they were going to have to be tossed.....so I made some yummy pancakes with them this morning.

Something we've been meaning to do this year is clean the boat bottom of the slime that grows on it during the summer in the brackish water in NC.

Looks like fun, doesn't it?  Really wasn't too bad - I use a "scrubbie pad" that has a handle and just brush away the algae/slime.  Took about an hour to do all that I could reach with snorkel gear.  I could to a more thorough job using SCUBA gear, but I didn't think it was bad enough to warrant using a tank.

Now &Zen called and said they were on their way from Bimini (they had stayed an extra day in the marina).   So we lifted anchor and moved to a spot closer to good snorkeling.

Went out the Cat Cay Cut past the pretty little lighthouse.

Now & Zen arrived with some "stowaways" - Jeanna and Jeff from Meriwether joined them for the couple of days we'll be here.  What fun!

We did a long snorkel - a pretty reef.

Duane speared a nice medium sized hogfish.  

Excellent eating!

And then I spotted a nice sized lobster.  Yum!

Tired but accomplished, we rafted up our boats and had a great evening and meal with the folks on Now & Zen.