Rum Cay at the dock

Sunday 16 June

Today I'm nursing a sore on the top of my foot and trying not to wear shoes or walk too much.

The wind was blowing out of the east, and there were rain clouds threatening. Notice this difference of description of threatening vs. promising or hopeful, depending upon the level of my fresh water tanks. My tanks are full, the clouds can threaten today.

I remembered the church in Black Point not having services when it rains, or threatens rain, and decided not to walk the mile into town to find out if the church at Rum Cay were meeting.

It is days like this that I really miss my church in Key West, and its great worship services and good preaching.

Diving the Rum Cay Wall

Saturday, 15 June 2013





Saturday morning the wind was calm, and my sailing friends left for San Salvador. As much as I want to go to San Salvador, they are running a tighter schedule than I have to, and I've got two more things I want to do here.





First, Bobby promised to make me a turtle, and that is worth waiting for! Later, we're going to take the Whaler around to a beach with scattered bleached and dead coral, where storms have littered the beaches with them, and I promised I'd help gather...





Secondly, I've always wanted to dive around Rum Cay, and I'm here, this is my chance.





The reason I didn't move out to anchor, Bobby has assured me that there is room for my boat here as long as I decide to stay. I was concerned about this, as he was expecting some large sportfishing boats to come in.





I took the Whaler and went meandering along the wall, marking a few places that looked good on the gps. Then I spotted two mooring balls, that I promptly investigated. I about shouted when I circled the one, the bottom looked perfect!





After putting out a granny line, I slipped into the crystal clear water, and could readily see a submerged float on the top of a head on the bottom, to help aid in underwater navigation, and a float for a safety stop.





There was very little current, and I checked the line and the attachments before going though a coral rock tunnel that opened out onto the wall. The view out that tunnel was spectacular! I exited the tunnel and journeyed across the wall face until I found another cut, coming back to the inside.





On a lot of walls, their is a fringing coral growth along the tops of the walls, so as you are approaching the wall from the shore, the bottom actually rises before it drops off the wall. My ideal bottom is sand chutes with coral ridges running perpendicular to shore, that end in the wall coral, with tunnels where you can pass through. This was my perfect place!





I dove the wall, and then eased over to the large coral patch the mooring line was chained into. The float on the top of the coral made navigation a snap, since the visibility was so spectacular.





I saw a couple of Caribbean reef sharks, and tons of smaller tropical fish. There was a pretty good diversity of coral, and I was delighted with the geographic structure of the dive. While I was waiting at my safety stop, along the line, I noticed a huge patch of sargassum weed drifting by. I hoped to see some big cruising fish, but did not. In the past few days, the fishermen have caught wahoo and blue marline along this coast, to say nothing of dolphin that routinely hang under the sargassum.





After the dive, I continued up the coast, enjoying watching the surf from the ocean side. The weather and water was awesome! I looked for a cut in the reef to get through to the salt pond, but was unwilling to attempt it with the surf.





Then I returned to the inside of the breakers out from the harbor, and snorkeled for awhile on some patch reefs. Then I made a short, 30' dive to check out one of the patch reefs and use the air in my tank down to 500 psi. When I dropped the hook, it settled on the bottom in sand, and I was amazed how tiny it looked. What I had hoped might be conch along the bottom would have been 20" across to have seen them.





I had watched a rain cloud forming all morning over Rum Cay, and I raced back to the boat to close hatches, arriving during sprinkles, just in time to close hatches before the heavy rains. I was already wet from diving, so it was a great time to collect rain water. I rinsed dive gear, topped my water tanks off, scrubbed the Whaler down, and eventually went inside and took a hot shower before re-topping the water tank off. I think that is the ultimate perfect way to end a day of diving!





The sun came out, and my fresh-showered, clean clothed self ambled out to catch lines for Ben, the Bahamian captain bringing in the sportfishing yacht with the owners aboard. They had missed out on the rain altogether.





Later that evening, I watched the sharks gather, patiently waiting for fish scraps and carcasses from the fish cleaning table.





Bobby had been surfing with some guests on the other side of the island, and he was back to pet a couple of nurse sharks that come up on the shore to get a morsel. It's a pretty good show!





Another great day in Rum Cay!

Trip to Hartford Cave

Friday, 14 June





Friday morning it began to rain about 0430. That is a wonderful way to wake up when your 150 gallon water tank is down to 45 gallons! I can stretch water when I need to, I just haven't been. I rinse off the dog every time she's in salt water. I rinse my gear when I snorkel. 150 gallons is a big tank for me and a dog. I caught 80 gallons that I saved, after I had washed stuff off, and gave the dog a bath





My sailing friends took off to explore the island on a rented golf cart, a great way to see the island.


I took the Whaler to find Hartford Cave, on the backside of the island. Remembering that the journey is the adventure, the trip around the point took me through some awesome water.





Garmin's cartography is developed somewhat by someone looking at aerial images, and guesstimating depths. Where a very dark image shows, often it is marked as a rock, when the bottom is actually grass in 20' of water. It's all about reading the water, and plotters are merely aids to navigation....





The southwestern side of the island is pot-marked with holes/sea caves in the rocky cliffs. There was one picturesque stone arch.





I saw one of the cows from the wild herd standing along the grassy area between a couple of the cliffs. I wonder, since beef is flavored by the type of grass a cow eats, what these cows must taste like. One of the locals told me that from time to time they go kill a cow...





The Flamingo Bay anchorage appears fantastic for a southerly, or southeasterly wind. There was a swell/surge similar to that like we encountered at Calabsh Bay on the day that I was there (with 16kt SE breeze.) There is deep white sand with black coral reefs. Yellow is elkhorn coral coming close to the surface. Some of the dark is grass. I would have no trouble loosely following Explorers waypoint and Garmin's track through the southern end, visually dodging reefs, with the trawler, with good light and visibility. From your anchorage, there are abundant patch reefs to snorkel or dive by dinghy. After the anchorage, the further around you go, the more abundant, and shallower the patch reefs get.





If you can make the passage without raising your blood pressure or destroying morale yelling at your crew, this is a good anchorage in the right conditions.





Hartford Cave is visible from the sea. It's eyebrow looking arch behind a 75' deep sandy beach awaited our arrival. We put a bow and stern anchor out, and flippered ashore floating a dry bag with my camera, lights, shoes, and assorted other treasures.





Some of the goat population evidently hangs in the coolness of the cavern, as evidenced by their droppings everywhere. If you think goat turds on your knees or hands will kill you, you might want to skip this one.





Hartford Cave is really a small cavern, with no area I could find out of natural light. That doesn't mean you don't need a flashlight... you do, you just probably don't need to lug a secondary light. What you need the flashlight for, and the reason I'm here, is to see the ancient (pre-Columbus) carvings in the wall. Bobby told me since I was there, that there are over 400 carvings, though I didn't find the numbers like that. Probably the reason I didn't, is that due to the huge amounts of rain here the past few months, parts of the walls are coated in green, and the algae obscures the petrogliffs.





If graffiti artists or carvers drew that stuff on a wall today, we would call it defacing a cave. But, hundreds of years later, they become historical. I was personally disappointed with the carvings I saw, as they didn't look that old, and impressed me more as defacing than historical. When I told Bobby that, he told me I just had missed a bunch of them. I'm not sure I'm willing to go snipe hunting twice, but, I suppose I've done some pretty dumb things...





Friday afternoon, when the sailors returned from their golf cart adventure, I took the golf cart and went a little further than I had previously walked. I was sent to see if it was too late to place an order for supper at either of the restaurants in town. Both cooks told me they like to know in the morning, or at least by 2. Neither were willing to begin preparing meals for 5 people at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.





The mailboat had arrived that morning, and re provisioned the town, and the one bar/restaurant had a half a dozen guys sitting under the tree, enjoying their first rum in a week. One man that was too drunk to stand wanted a ride home. Oh, and he wasn't sure which way that was. One of the young men in town, Patrick, who I'd met before, loaded him on the golf cart, and together, we took him to his drive way, where, upon disembarking the golf cart, promptly fell over in his driveway. We departed, leaving him for his family, including one teen-aged young man embarrassed by association. What a sad state of disrepair of a life.





I returned Patrick to where he'd joined me, and made one pass up the hill to see the view. I called John, on the Full Deck, to get him to pull some marinated beef strips from the freezer to begin defrosting, and ambled back to the boat. Maybe I'll have more time to explore ashore later.





I cook on the grill 95% of the time, but the no-see-ums and mosquitoes drove me inside, and I turned on the generator, air conditioner, and stove to cook a meal for me and my sailing buds. We had a great time visiting.

Walking around Rum Cay

Thursday, 13 June





In the morning, the wind was coming straight down the pier, and it was looking like rain. I decided to do some household chores and maintenance while I waited to see if I could catch some drinking water.





I defrosted the fridge and both freezers, cleaned, and vacuumed, moved stuff around, and re-cycled the little bit of rain water to pretty much get the salt off the boat.





I talked with one of the boats at noon, who had brought their SeaVee in from fishing to eat lunch on still ground. They had hooked two blue marlin, and one had totally stripped the line from the reel in under three minutes while they did their best to keep up with the fish, and hope he would turn.





In the afternoon, I walked a mile into town, and made a loop. I found two stores, and a restaurant, all closed as I went by. I saw an Anglican Episcopal church, and Saint John Baptist church.





I saw a couple of cemeteries, the most interesting one being just above the government dock, along the coast road. It is easy to find, surrounded by a low wall, between the road and the shore. Most of the graves had no markers, but appear very old. The markers I could read were from deaths in the 1880's.





I looked to sea, and was surprised, and delighted, to see my friends on the Full Deck and the Simpatico coming to Rum Cay. I had spoken with John in the morning on the SSB, and they had talked about going to Conception until Saturday, and then coming to Rum. I figured our paths would be crossing as we headed our separate directions.





I started walking for the marina, and Ben, a Bahamian captain of a 70' yacht docked here, was coming from the marina in his goft cart. He turned around and gave me a ride back to the marina, and we caught lines for the sailboats.





In the evening, a couple, Gene and Cat, and their friend Bill, that were anchored on a Leopard 40, Kalakau, invited us to join them for a pot-luck barbecue at the public park. We cooked fish and hamburgers, and chicken, and ate chips, and scalloped potatoes, and carrots, and bean salad.





This young couple took off last November to sail the Caribbean. Now they are returning to the States to go back to work in August. We talked to them about their adventures, and told them about some places we'd visited. They'll be in the Exumas for a little bit, and I hope our paths will cross again.

Calabash Bay to Rum Cay

Wednesday 12 June





The weather was calling for calming wind the next couple of days, so I headed around Cape Santa Maria for distant horizons... Rum Cay.







The seas were on my bow, and I bucked a current of over a knot that was from the SE. It was a nice trip, and I met one catamaran sailboat enroute.







When I arrived at Rum, the wind was picking up, and the swell was wrapping around on the reef. I sure was glad to see breakers on the distance that would cut the swell, which was on my beam at that point.







As soon as I got behind the breakers, the swell was gone, and I could shorten the tow for entering the harbor. There were buoys out, all to starboard going in, and I entered the great little hidden harbor of Rum Cay.







This marina was hit hard with Hurricane Irene, which shoaled the channel to about shin deep. At considerable time and expense the channel was re-dug, and is not in the same position as the latest Explorer charts show. In the Bahamas, its all about reading the water, anyhow.





The marina does not have electric, and some of their piers were damaged in Irene and Sandy, and they are allowing free dockage. It is the first dock I've been at overnight since I left the house!





Bobby has been here since the late 60's. His family had bought some land, and he built the facilities, and worked as a pilot for a now closed dive resort on the island. His real passion though, is for sculpturing. He carves gorgeous sculptures out of dead coral, and the property is surrounded with his works of art. Some of his art is on sale in Georgetown, or you can buy directly from him at Rum Cay.







The mailboat hasn't been to Rum Cay in several weeks, and the island is out of pretty much everything. I don't need anything, but, I've heard the locals about discussing it. Something about Rum Cay being out of rum...







Rum Cay is famous for its sportfishing, and when some of the boats returned in the evening, the area around the cleaning table came alive with sharks. I'm used to seeing big nurse sharks, but there are a lot of big lemon sharks here, too. I saw one BIG bull shark make a pass by, but only saw him once. There were over a dozen 8-ft plus sharks, and I didn't count the smaller ones.







I put the little GoPro camera on the PVC pole and stuck it in the water. Every time I'd put it in the water, the sharks would think I was feeding them, and I'd have to yank it out. It was fun trying, anyhow.





Bobby and Gro hosted a potluck pizza party, and I rounded up cheese, pepperoni, and a can of diced tomatoes, and everyone pitched in incredients. Gro cooked fantastic pizzas! It was fun visiting with the folks here.





Gro is from Norway, and originally came here by sailboat. After she left by boat, she flew back. Rum Cay is that kind of place!





Mercy met their dog, Ashley, who we had been cautioned about. Fortunately, Mercy gets along with everybody.