Friday April 25: Little Harbor

Steve ended up making cracked conch with the three keepable conchs he found. By the time he cleaned the third one, he was getting pretty good at it!

Not a skill I am going to learn, thank you :-)

Pound the heck out of it with a hammer, cut into small pieces, coat with bread crumbs, fry in a perfectly healthy oil of some kind and done.

Excellent afternoon snack.

The lure of a better place to snorkel had us up and moving pretty early yesterday. The weather was nice, the winds out of the south at 5 to 10 mph. Not bad at all.

Sandy Cay is where we headed. It's actually a designated preserve so no fishing or taking of conch.



So we dropped the dinghy and headed over to the reef a bit before slack tide. Because we are just inside the cays that break the ocean from the Sea of Abaco, the current can make the snorkeling less fun.

It was a very pretty reef with lots of reef fish and some very nice staghorn coral and other invertebrates.

The best was the sighting of two very large and graceful eagle rays They are so fun to see (no pics though :-(  )

Steve headed out in his kayak to check out the shoreline south of us.

By the time the tide came in, our "protection" from the south winds had somehow gotten a lot smaller!

Apparently they were just low sand bars that were mostly covered by the tide. Fortunately the main island was still there.

As we watched the sunset, little did we know that we were not going to be getting much sleep!

Lesson Learned: if an anchorage is labeled as "surge" next to it, what they really mean is your boat will roll with the incoming tide (for us this was midnight to 6 am) so as to not let the occupants get any sleep.

Definitely noted for next time ....








By the time we left this morning, there were 5 other boats that had come in. Hope they don't plan on anchoring there all night!

It was another good snorkel for Steve as I dropped him off at the reef and then just kind of floated around until he had his fill. Saw the two eagle rays again!! A definite score at this reef :-)

Our destination today was a short 7 miles to Little Harbor and Pete's Pub.

This is the farthest south we'll travel before turning around and heading back toward Hopetown and several other places we skipped on the way down.

The entrance to Little Harbor carries only 3.5 feet at low water so we anchored outside to wait for low tide to come and then a rising tide to start.

Of course Steve found a small reef nearby :-)

We thought about just staying anchored right here and just dinghy in but on the chart were those words "surge". NO WAY - can't do two sleepless nights in a row.....

So we picked up a mooring ball from Pete's Pub and were settled by 3 pm.

Of course we had to attend happy hour and try their signature drink - the Blaster. Ok but nothing to write home about :-)

The harbor is full of mostly sailboats and catamarans - and a few of us trawlers thrown in to keep all of them honest.

Thunderstorms threatened but never did anything other than make some noise and a few sprinkles.

The ocean is just a few steps over a small walkway from Pete's. The waters are amazing.

Funnest thing today? The Bahamian speed bump.

Made for a long quite fat length of rope. Didn't seem to do much from what I could see :-)

Tomorrow? Not sure yet. It is supposed to be the calmest day yet. Perhaps a fishing trip to the ocean side??