Our Great Adventure : Nurses and Nurse Sharks

Allan's Cay

We have left the chain of the Exuma Islands and it's going to be hard (and painful for you to read) to do a complete summation of the three weeks we spent there - so I'll just do some highlights.

The Exumas are an archipelago of 365 islands and cays so the locals boast "an island for every day of the year"! After leaving Nassau we went to Highbourne Cay - our first Exuma Island! There we were able to meet up with our friends on sv Maewyn - the family from NS who are on the same kind of boat as us and who we met all the way back in Port Washington! It was really nice catching up with them especially since shortly we're heading to Turks and Caicos and they had to go back to Nassau for boat repairs so we won't be running into them again :( We spent about three weeks making our way south along the chain of cays and islands - each one surrounded by crystal clear water every shade of blue you can imagine and lined with talcum powder soft white sand beaches. Some of the cays were quiet and have no settlements or cruisers and some have small but vibrant and always friendly communities filled with happy friendly locals who are only too happy to chat and help in any way.

At Highbourne we dinghied to a marina to fill our jerry cans with diesel and gasoline and as we approached there was a sign on the dock saying "Beware of Sharks". For some reason I thought it was a joke like the "Unattended children will be given a shot of espresso and a kitten" sign. Then I saw all these massive dark shapes emerging beneath our inflatable dingy and burst out laughing because the first thing that came to my mind was that line from Jaws "we're gonna need a bigger boat". We tied up at the dock and making very sure we did not fall into the shark infested water went to fill up our jerry cans. From the top of the dock we got an incredible view of the sharks and other massive fish swimming around - it was like looking into an aquarium. We learned the sharks were only Nurse Sharks and nothing to worry about but they were still about 13ft long and having them swim under our little dingy was quite unnerving! Sarah M. I always think of you when I see a shark!!

One of the our favourite places was Warderick Wells, a Bahamas National Trust Site and part of the Exuma Land and Sea National Park. One of the reasons we liked it so much was that up until that point we had been visiting very small Cays and while they offered great snorkelling and swimming and beautiful scenery, the beaches were quite small and didn't offer much of an opportunity to go for a walk or explore.

Trail on Warderick Wells

By the time we reached the Park we were only too happy to go off hiking one of their many trails. We spent 3 days there relaxing and exploring the small islands. One of the trails leads to a place called Boo Boo Hill where legend has it you can hear the souls who were lost on a shipwreck singing hymns.

At the top of the hill is a "cairn"where cruisers find a piece of drift wood and paint the name of the vessel on it and leaving it in a huge pile - the mementos left behind are considered an offering to the spirits for good sailing weather. It was interesting to walk around and see all the names and how many we had met or seen along the way. Of course we proudly added sv Nomads to the pile!

Exuma Land and Sea Park

We went to Compass Cay because it advertises "you can pet a shark like a dog" so naturally I was all over that. What a bizarre thing to see it is! They have constructed a low dock that sits just below the water line at high tide. These tiny nurse sharks swim up, actually it's more like they climb using their pectoral fins like arms pulling themselves up and along the dock. Here they wait to be fed and lay there while you rub them! They were so small they actually looked like gigantic cat fish.

Petting a shark "like a dog"

When we got to Staniel Cay - a place that boasts wild swimming pigs - we met up with Alexis and Darlene two colleagues I used to work with in Halifax. They had tried to message us but we didn't have internet and then when we got their messages and messaged them back they didn't have internet so I was beginning to think we wouldn't find each other. I was down in the galley making lunch and I hear "Hello from Halifax" and then a lady talking to James I thought "that's Alexis' voice" and ran up the stairs to see Alexis standing at the bow of their boat waving!

Dinner with Alexis and Darlene

Alexis was visiting Darlene and her husband John on their boat and they invited us over for dinner. We had a huge roast dinner with all the trimmings and talked about our experiences living aboard and cruising. It was really nice to see people from back home and catch up!

James and I did go and see the pigs and they eagerly swam over to our dingy to see what treats we had brought - cabbage was not a hit and most of them spit it out! One pig was happy to eat it and stood with his head resting on the side of the dingy and his mouth wide open while I threw pieces of food into it! Staniel Cay's most famous draw is "Thunderball Grotto". It's an underwater cave full of sea life. You have to snorkel it at slack tide because the current is so strong you either wouldn't be able to get in or you would be pushed out. You have to dive down and swim under some overhanging rocks for a second and then you enter the grotto. It's a little scary seeing this lump of rock in the middle of the sea and swimming under rocks and not having any idea what's on the other side. I attempted to film us swimming into the grotto but as soon as I tried to enter I got swept to one side by current so the video is just a jumble to water and rocks as I tumbled around! Once you fight through the current you enter the cave and look up to see light streaming in everywhere - it's so bright and beautiful. There is a coral reef inside and tons of fish who aren't the least bit shy. The grotto is named after the James Bond movie "Thunderball" that was filmed there. I can't imagine how they got all their equipment in there as it's quite small inside. "Never say Never Again", "Into the Blue" and "Splash" were also all filmed there too. The bar at the marina at Staniel Cay is full of photos of Bond and the crew relaxing and drinking in the bar. After Nassau we re-watched "Casino Royale" and it was really neat to see all the places in Nassau we had just been so we're looking forward to re-watching "Thunderball" once we can get our hands on it! We did an amazing yoga class there on our last day - the perfect send off from a beautiful island.

Thunderball Grotto from the Outside

Entrance to Thunderball Grotto

Inside Thunderball Grotto

Black Point was another favourite for us. It has a settlement of about 220 people so by Exuma Island standards it's quite populated! There are several food shops there and some native straw weaving, as well as a primary school, a clinic with one nurse, three restaurants and two bars. We were able to get all our laundry done there AND take a hot shower in fresh water - what James and I longingly call "a shore shower". It was $4 for 8 mins of heaven! We got clean and our clothes got clean! We even went out for lunch while we were there - I had a fish burger and James had a conch burger and they were both great - we even had french fries and both said we can't remember the last time we had fries but I think it was in New Jersey when our engine died at sea. One of the bars on the island has a "Cruisers Happy Hour" so we met three other boats there with people our own age!!! We were starting to think that would never happen!! There was a Dutch couple there who have already circumnavigated and came back to the Bahamas before heading back across the Atlantic and home. We met a young couple from Texas who like us are new to cruising. We also met the crew of sv Vagabond from Toronto who incidentally are also the crew from one of our favourite shows "Schitt's Creek" - one of the guys taunted us with the fact that he had the script for season three but no amount of 2 for 1 rum punch specials was getting us access to it. Speaking of rum punch specials - I hate rum punch specials. We had spent the day trekking around the island and did not eat lunch and since the happy hour started at 4pm we headed there before dinner - very poor choice. We had all commented on how strong the drinks were and when we went back into the bar to order a second drink and saw them being made we were astounded - it was an ENTIRE cup full of rum with about 2 tablespoons of fruit juice thrown in. You know where is a really bad place for a hangover? A boat. Especially when you have to get up at 5am to start sailing to the next location to outrun the strong winds and the boat is very rocky. We are hoping to meet up with Vagabond again in Turks and Caicos since they are planning about the same route as us down to South America.

Notice Board at Black Point

A puppy that I thought should probably live with us on the boat - I did not win that argument

So sad to see us leave

Basketball at Black Point

We went to Georgetown to wait out the strong winds and as far as weather locations go it was an ideal anchorage for the wind direction - it was flat and we were able to sleep. In every other respect Georgetown was not for us. It has set its own throughly bizarre cruising community with its own "hierarchy". Each morning you can tune into channel 72 on your VHF radio to listen to "The Cruisers Net"- essentially a bunch of cruisers waffle on about what is planned for the day, what the weather will be and what the lunch specials are on "Chat and Chill Beach". They have poker, church groups, AA meetings, dingy races, and lots of other "activities". We tuned in on our first day because they have a section devoted to people selling/trading things they don't need and we wanted to get our hands on some charts for further south. There were a couple of people looking to get rid of charts but you have to wait until the end when EVERYONE switches to the same channel and tries to hail whoever is selling the item they want - it sounds like someone eavesdropping on hundreds of calls on a switchboard, it was utterly overwhelming. There are hundreds of boats there and everyone has the volume of their radio so high that you don't even need to turn your own radio on to hear the Cruiser's Net - at 8am sharp the entire anchorage is flooded with the voice of the announcer. People are completely obsessed with it and bring their portable radios into the town to listen to the Net if they're not on their boat at 8am. I'm not sure if the cruising community at Georgetown is familiar with another kind of Net - it also is a great venue for advertising events and wares for sale and updating you on the weather - it's called the Internet. One of the strangest trends that we haven't seen anywhere else is a refusal by people to sit in their dinghies - everyone stands with a rope in one hand and steering the motor with the other - we haven't seen that anywhere else. The best way I can explain Georgetown is a retirement community on Spring Break. Nevertheless it was a great place to provision and we restocked the larders and filled up the water (which entails dinghy-ing over to the water spout and getting in a very long line of dinghies waiting to fill up). We went out for lunch for one last fish fry before heading to the more remote "out islands" but sadly it didn't compare to the Nassau Fish Fry. The next day we left the Exuma chain and continued to make our way south.