I awoke in Sandy Cay in such beautiful aqua water only 10 feet deep and we could easily see the entire sandy bottom and everything in the water – plants, etc. After breakfast, at 9 am, the water was so still, like glass and it was already 72 degrees and not getting warmer than 75, we took the dinghy around to the other side of Sandy Cay, which is part of the Pelican Cays Land and Sea Park here in the Abacos. We hooked on to a mooring ball, that the Friends of the Environment had placed there, and went snorkeling.
I went into the water first and before I put my head in the water, I could see something brown kind of coming toward me, but wasn’t sure if it was just seaweed floating under the water, but when I got fully in the sea and looked through my mask I realized that it was a ray coming directly toward me!! I yelled and practically jumped back in the dinghy. If it had been a shark, I would have been back in the dinghy but I just hung on with my body flattened against the bottom of the inflatable dinghy!! I don’t know why I was so scared except that it was the only thing in the water and coming directly to me! I was thinking about the Alligator hunter being stabbed in the heart by one of these unusual looking sea creatures. Then Doug got in the water and I looked again and it was gone!! I kind of wanted to see it again – going the other way.
We swam a very short distance to huge coral formations that we had seen under the dinghy as we went over them to the mooring ball. The coral formations and garden was the best we have seen anywhere.
There were huge elkhorn coral formations and many other types of coral, some of which we had never seen before, along with a variety of fish. There was more coral than fish. 
We went back to the boat for a break and to get the underwater camera so that we could document some of the beauty.
After lunch we went back for a 2nd snorkel. This time we took EcoAdventurer around since it was deep enough but there was a strong current and so we also rode over to another one of the mooring balls in the dinghy. I tried swimming to the mooring ball from the big boat but wasn’t making any progress because of the current and so we got in the dingy and motored over a short way to the mooring ball.
For some reason the current was absent (luckily) and we dropped down in the water to find a completely different coral garden – just as beautiful as the other but less Elhorn and more delicate coral – still rising about 20 feet up from the bottom. There were more fish here too and we took a lot of photos. There were many blue neons – small florescent fish – very cute and lovely to watch darting here and there among the green and yellow coral. We also were swimming with the usual array of yellow fin snapper and parrot fish.
We spent the night on the hook at Lynard Cay with the little boat with red sails and a catch with two children and a dalmation with a red life preserver!! We had sailed to Lynard from Sandy Cay without using the motor, which was nice for a change. We could have gone further south but we didn’t have any protected anchorage to speak of and so since we saw these other sailboats, we decided to join them.
Today we had breakfast, lunch and dinner on board. Doug does almost all of the cooking and I have started doing the dishes. He’s been making me fried egg sandwiches on dense Bahama bread with thin slices of fried turnkey – yummy! I have tea and him coffee. For lunch we usually have turkey sandwiches or cheese and tomato sandwichs with Pringles and pickles. For dinner, he cooks something good!! We have been eating well.
