Monday May 6th 24 31N 76 47W
Agua Therapy
Don Graham Glenys Graham
Mon 6 May 2013 16:47
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Monday May 6th 24 31N 76 47W
We have just arrived at another mooring ball at Shroud Cay,
Bahamas after leaving Warderick Wells Cay. Stayed there for a whole week waiting
for the weather to improve, not that it was bad just the wind in the wrong
direction and watched the lightening in the distance. thankfully it went right
past us. All we can say is what an amazing place to stay, every day we had a
different scene, when the tides changed, and dropped leaving different areas
drying out so you could see the sand and birds walking over it. Some days you
could almost walk to the shore, something we didn’t fancy doing late afternoon
after watching 3 metre sharks just scouting for food, there were smaller sharks,
nurse sharks and lemon sharks, lots of stingrays, big yellow fin jacks all
of which waited at the stern for hours. The area is a national park for land and
sea, we were lucky enough to get a mooring ball almost over a sunken boat which
will eventually become a small reef, we saw 2 huge lobsters, its a No Take area
so the lobsters, conch and fish can continue to be left alone to grow. Ashore
there is a small office where you pay with a few postcards, books to swop, DVD’s
for rent, T shirts and books to buy. No food, water or fuel. On the beach there
is a reconstructed whale skeleton, they found it on a beach and the poor thing
died because it swallowed plastic and lots of rubbish so its so important not to
dump plastic at sea. The Islands “residents” are Bananaquit birds tiny birds
yellow and black with curved beaks, some call them sugar birds because they love
sugar, we watched one bird find someone's coke can and a cup to drink from.
There are what look like giant hamsters or rats, brown with short tails called
Hutia’s we saw one scoot through the trail we went on. Saturday night its
traditional for the boats at anchor to meet at 6 on the beach by the wooden
tables for drinks and snacks, you take your own, we saw a Hutia come down and
take the cracker’s that had blown off the table, I was lucky enough to take some
photos but I can’t post them now until we get the internet.
The highest point on this place people have placed driftwood
with the boat names and dates in a huge pile, we find some wood ourselves and
Don burned our names, date and boat name into it so we took ours on the second
visit to Boo Boo Hill.
We did meander through the mangroves on a few trails one took
us to the blow holes in the rocks, some went to tiny secluded beaches, along the
way are signs showing the way or arrows otherwise you could get into trouble. We
took the dinghy outside the mooring field to a couple of small reefs and went
snorkelling, saw Barracuda, Napoleon Wrasse, Grouper, Yellow tail snapper and
lots of small reef fish, its very shallow so there is no need to dive here.
There are 22 mooring balls most were empty when we arrived but the place did
fill up by the time we left, most boats were American, there were a few big Gin
Palaces with lots of crew. While we were ashore on Saturday we did meet a few
nice folks, some of which are heading in our direction and some live in Fort
Lauderdale, I expect we will catch up with them again in the future.
This place only has 5 mooring balls its going to be quiet,
there is no office ashore but we plan to take the dinghy through the mangroves
to explore. As far as plans are concerned we hope to hop up short distances
until we reach the Berry Islands before we cross the Gulf stream to Fort
Lauderdale. That will have to be when the weather is “right”.
So BFN
Agua Therapy
Don and Glenys |