Coral gardens, sea anemones, sea slugs, turtles…Wow!

This morning after breakfast, we set out in our dinghy with the video camera, binoculars and bottled water for the nature tour. We somehow missed the entrance of the creek, so we went further along and entered in a shallow creek while we turned off the motor of the dinghy and floated along with the current to hear and see better. The water was very still and shallow, so we just leaned over the sides of our dinghy and it was as if we were looking down into an aquarium!!

We didn’t know what to expect, but I never thought there would be coral gardens, sea anemones, sea slugs, and lots of fish here. You didn’t need to get in the water to snorkel, in fact, doing that would have disturbed the environment – fish, etc. This was perfect. The sides of the creek were mangroves and there was just enough current in the water to keep us moving slowly along without disturbing the water so that we could see through it easily.

At one point we saw a turtle swimming up to us while we were almost stopped. I stood up in the dinghy and started filming the turtle. It came even closer to us. Sure enough it was a fairly small – 2 feet in diameter – hawksbill turtle, which is endangered. Fantastic. I’m hoping the film of it turned out as we haven’t finished the disk yet, so we haven’t seen the film of the turtle or of all of the other underwater creatures we saw that day.

After we got back to the boat, we had lunch and We sailed to Sandy Cay this morning from Snake Cay. We had to motor a little through narrow channel. Sandy Cay was our anchorage – wide open behind a small island with no other boats nearby. This is because there are ocean swells that move you all night. I moved to the aft cabin because Doug said it was very rolly in our usual bedroom under the bow of the boat. We watched a lovely sunset with our rum drinks and relaxed.

Friendly locals, “no-seeums” & beautiful fish

After a leisurely breakfast aboard EcoAdventurer, we sailed from MarshHarbor to Snake Cay. Snake Cay was just an accident as we were going to sail to the other side of the Sea of Abaco but it was too shallow over there and so we ended up stopping at Snake Cay after I read that you could do a kayak or dinghy tour through the small creeks just insde the Sea of Abaco.

When we got there, we realized that we didn’t have much gas for the dinghy to do the nature tour but we saw a couple of native Bahamians in a skiff going into the small harbor, which we were anchored just outside of. So, we jumped in the dinghy and motored toward them and the dock. They were just getting into a pickup truck when we called to them. One guy came back to us and he said he would take our gas can into town and fill it up with 2 gallons of gas. We gave him $10. He said it would be about ½ hour and that he was taking the other two guys home to town and he would be back because he lived nearby.

We waited for and hour and 15 minutes and were about ready to go back to the boat because the sand fleas or no-seeums as they call them were really biting now that it was dusk, when we heard the sound of a vehicle coming back down the road. Luckily it was him with our gas. He brought us our $2.00 change, which we gladly told him to keep and that was all we had to offer. He said he was glad we waited and that he was sorry it took him so long. Our faith in human nature returned.

There was a sunken boat of good size just inside the small harbor and as we waited for him on the shore, we saw the reflection of hundreds of good-size fish swimming in a bay of the wreck. Wow – if I had wanted to catch some fish, this would have been the place. But, the fish here are so pretty and colorful, I don’t have the heart to kill them. I’d rather eat soup and sandwiches. We spent the a very quiet night just off Snake Cay with another sailboat fairly near us – but they stayed by themselves as we did.