Pineapple Cays to near Rock Sound, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 After breakfast we motored about 4 miles back north to the little islands called Pineapple Cays for some snorkeling.  Cerca Trova had been at Governor's Harbour for a few days - they arrived at about the same time as us.  

The snorkeling was not spectacular, but pretty interesting in places.

 

Lots of these little bright orange starfish.

 

Huge schools of these fry - fun to swim thru them and watch them part the way for you. 

 

Something about starfish....

 

And a pretty queen angelfish with the brilliant neon colors.

 Popped my head up from snorkeling.

 Pretty purple fans and lots of fish.

And back to Sojourn. 

We motored (no wind) about 16 miles south to the exposed anchorage outside of Rock Sound.  We'll depart in the morning for a long day to the northern tip of Cat Island.  Beautiful sunset over the calm water.

Ten Bay, Eleuthera, Bahamas

Today we ran out of store-bought bread....time to get back in the bread-making swing of things.

 

Obviously, I left one in the oven a little too long!  All good though.

 

And this year, I bought a pack of 100 bread bags from Amazon.  Previously, I'd used left over bread bags from the grocery store.  But as the season progresses, the printing ink on the bags starts to deteriorate and rub off messily.  (I like the bags better than a hard container as they keep the bread fresher I believe).

 

Then mid-day we were treated to a nice rain shower - then a pretty rainbow as it cleared.

 

 I had a hankering for some pizza.

 

So that's what we had for dinner. His/Her pizza.  

It was good but I'll tweak a few things next time - less tomato sauce and believe-it-or-not, less cheese!  It was just too thick. 

 We'll probably move back north a bit to the Pineapple Cays tomorrow.   The usual couple of episodes of The Crown - we're at season 3 and they COMPLETELY changed the cast!  Had to get used to all new actors for the queens/princes/princesses.   Too weird!

Ten Bay, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 First task of the day was for Duane to go up the mast to troubleshoot our wind gauge.  It had started giving odd readings and electronic calibration at the helm didn't solve it.  Yep, that's him at the top.

 

He had taken a spray can of lubricant with him (he takes a pocket of tool/items with him with a variety of things that he might need).  Unfortunately, the cap fell off into the water.  Luckily it floated well and he was able to put the dinghy down and  retrieve it about 15 minutes later when he came down from the top.

 

After lunch we suited up or some exploring. 

I will say that snorkeling is not the best around here!   Just rocky shoreline and deep right up to the land.

 

But Duane did find some life below some rocks.

 

Back to the boat - pretty sunny day.

This was the prize from the trip.   I had this for dinner over some pasta.

 

 And a pretty sunrise this morning.

Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 We left fairly early to make another 25 miles south - out the narrow cut.

 

The winds were 15-20 knots so we raised the sails and had a wonderful day sailing!

 

The winds weren't exactly from the right direction, so we had to tack a couple of times.  (The desired track was the straight black then purple line)  The path we sailed is the yellow line.  Nice to move engine-less!

 I made a quick little video just walking up to the bow of the boat under sail.  

 

We're anchored in a pretty little bay, will try to find some snorkeling tomorrow.

 

Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera, Bahamas

We started the day with banana pancakes - the bananas we'd gotten in Bimini were ripening too quickly so they needed to be used.  They were delicious!

 

 

Our new friends on Manta Cerca Trova sailed down today.  Here they are coming into the narrow cut at Hatchet Bay.

 

We went out mid-day to find some snorkeling.  The shoreline is quite rocky here.

 

The coral was quite lovely.

 

But unfortunately a lot of it was quite deep.

 

And the sun was peeking in-and-out, so the visibility wasn't the greatest.

But we enjoyed a nice long swim pulling the dinghy behind us since it was too deep to anchor.

We even swam thru the narrow cut, thinking that would be interesting - but there was nothing there except the steep cut-out walls.

The Cerca Trova crew Royce & Jennifer stopped by and invited us to happy hour which we really enjoyed.  Little did we know - Royce, I believe, has as many jokes in his repertoire as Ralph does!! 

 

Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 With some winds forecast that would make staying put a little uncomfortable, we pulled up the anchor and headed 25 miles south.

To get south, we have to go thru Current Cut.  We've done this numerous times before.  As this is a narrow cut with large bodies of water on both sides, the current is swift with the changing tides.  Rational people time their passages so that the current helps them (or at least doesn't hinder them).  We were lazy and didn't get moving until mid-morning and we knew the tide would be against us.  (If we had gotten moving at about 7AM the current would have been helping us).  But no worries, we have plenty of power available with the engines so we fought a 4+ knot current for about 10 minutes.  Makes for a slow passage but perfectly safe.  

 

Going thru the cut there are some "swirly" currents.

 

The Current Pride ferry/mail boat loading.

 

On the other side of the cut is a lovely bay.

 

And the water is just glorious!  We did actually put the main sail up at this point.  The light winds helped with an extra knot or so.

 

Going into Hatchet Bay is a little narrow looking.

 

 

But as long as you stick to the middle, those nasty rocks on both sides can't hurt you!

 

 

And we were shocked that we are the only boat in the large harbor!!

Leftover curry for dinner and a couple of episodes of The Crown.

Meeks Patch, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 The winds shifted a bit so we decided to move 5 miles over to a little un-inhabited island - Meeks Patch.  I understand that there are some feral pigs on the island but we did not see any.

On arrival, we saw that another Manta - Cerca Trova - was anchored there as well.  This boat was the last Manta sail catamaran made in 2008. 

 

 It was time to go a load of laundry.  Fun to do it just using solar vs. the old way of powering up the generator!  The sun/breeze had the clothes dry in 20 minutes!

 

We put our wetsuits on later in the day hoping to find some snorkeling as there was a spot noted on the navigation charts.  It turned out to be pretty mediocre - we didn't even bother getting in the water.  I guess we're spoiled by wonderful coral/fish.  We dinghied over and said hello to the Cerca Trova crew. 

We'd planned to do a happy hour with them but decided this morning to head on south.  We'll cross paths with them again at some point for our happy hour!

Royal Island, Eleuthera, Bahamas

Beautiful calm day meant that we could go all the way around and north of Egg Island for some snorkeling.

 

The first couple of spots we snorkeled were kindof ho-hum. 

 

But we eventually found a better part of the reef.  I pulled the dinghy around with the tether rather than anchor it.  There was a decent current out in the open ocean and it's just easier to pull the dinghy along with us than to constantly have to swim back to it against a current.

 

We came upon this turtle resting on the bottom.

 

But unlike yesterday, this one was quickly vamoose!

 

Duane diving down for a look.

 

A few hours later, back to the boat via the pretty channel between Royal and Egg Islands.

 

 

Just one nice sized lobster for the day.  We saw several large groupers - but thought the season was closed until after February.  We looked it up later and saw that technically, we could have taken one - grouper season closes today Dec 1.  Oh well, we'll have grouper fingers hopefully March 1 when the season opens again!

 

The tail is on a large Corelle dinner plate - so a decent size.

I made me some simple lobster pasta with lemon juice/white wine/butter and garlic.  (Duane had spaghetti).

Fun day!