Island Hopping

Our winter has been phenomenal!  We have hopped our way down the northern Exuma islands, then across to Eleuthera, and we are currently in Abaco…but that is way too much to cover in one post, so this blog will take you from Hoffman’s Cay to Glass Window, Eleuthera.

These are all of the places we have stopped along the way.

Coral Harbour, New Providence

Northern Exumas

Highbourne Cay (pronounced key)

Spirit Cay

Normans Cay

Shroud Cay

Warderwick Wells Cay

O’Briens Cay

Compass Cay

Big Major at Staniel Cay

Eleuthera

Rock Sound, Eleuthera

Governors Harbour

Hatchet Bay

Glass Window

There are only two choices on our Garmin InReach…’recent track’ or ‘view all tracks.’ The second option shows all tracks we have created in the past 4 years, which can be very confusing…so I opted for ‘recent’ and added my own beginning.

After leaving Hoffman Cay, our next stop was Coral Harbor on the southwest side of New Providence.  Our normal cruising itinerary would not have included Nassau or New Providence, but this is where they needed us to deliver the Buckets of Hope.  We were thankful that our drop off location was not in Nassau!

During the crossing, I was surprised to see the color of the water matched the color of the buckets! 

Thankfully, there was plenty of help when it came time to offload!  The team made short work of getting the 300 buckets (between both Right Hand and Seaquel) loaded onto two trucks.  Arnold Dorsett was the coordinator who organized the delivery, from the Bahamas side, and he was so very happy and appreciative to get these buckets! He told us that they had already finished the classes, and were planning the graduation for the following week.  He was very excited to be able to hand out the buckets at graduation!

To learn more about this project, go to www.hopefleet.org

While exploring the waters around Spirit Cay, we noticed a white float and used the lookie bucket (I will explain later) to see what it marked.  I expected to see some type of lobster/crab pot, however, what I saw was an abandoned fishing net destroying fans, and other types of soft coral, as it was being dragged across the bottom. It was not easy to get it into our boat…

An even more difficult task was dragging the net to the highest part of the island in the hope that it would not (under normal conditions) get carried out to sea again.  Keith and Eddie did a great job!

Warderwick Wells

Still traveling with our tribe…four boats strong!

Biggest hermit crabs claws I have ever seen.

The Exuma Land and Sea Park has a whale skeleton on the beach at Warderwick Wells.

Shroud Cay - This is the lookie bucket.  It’s simply a 5 gallon bucket with the bottom replaced with plexiglass.  As you can see…it works great! The top half of the plexiglass shows what the turtle looks like from the surface, but the bottom half shows the miracle that is lookie bucket technology! 

Cacti on Warderwick Wells.

Plane wreck at O’Briens Cay

Dive! Dive!

Rachel’s Bubble Bath at Compass Cay.  The wave energy, from the ocean side, is forced through a narrow opening causing the wave to surge and spill into the pool on the other side of the rocks.  If you wait in the pool, during high tide, the waves will create a very turbulent and bubbly experience.  That is my head popping up after diving under the initial spill. Swimming in this was fun, but exhausting!

Thunderball Grotto at Staniel Cay. This location was made famous by the 1963 James Bond movie “Thunderball”

After leaving Staniel Cay, we traveled 50 miles across Exuma Sound to anchor in Rock Sound, Eleuthera.

We were able to take our ebikes ashore and ride across the island to an amazing beach on the other side.

Unfortunately, many area of the beach were littered with plastic debris and abandoned fishing nets that wash ashore over time.

Can they knock coconuts out of the tree?  Thankfully, they kept their bike helmets on for much needed protection!

Success meant we were able to make fresh coconut milk, coconut flour, and toasted shredded coconut…yum!  Additionally, Keith and Eddie were able to capture two spider crabs while we were anchored in Hatchet Bay…so a crab cake dinner was on the menu.

While also visited a blue hole while in Hatchet Bay, and Gail noticed these birds in a tree. We were able to get to the other side to capture some pictures.  Her friend identified them as Yellow Crowned Night Herons.

Cruising along the west coast of Eleuthera.

We anchored at Glass Window, and walked across the street to visit the Queen’s Bath…this place is magical!

We did climb down and play in the pools.

And we got out before the wave action got any worse.

Back at the anchorage we continued our snorkeling adventures…giving Keith opportunities to spear lionfish!

I know…we play a LOT!

Snorkel Extravaganza

We have been in the Bahamas for just over two weeks.  During that time we have had numerous snorkeling opportunities, and if you know anything about us…we live for snorkeling opportunities!  

Keith and Eddie decided to try the hookah (the diving kind, not the smoking kind:).  They both liked the hookah dive, but getting the hoses sorted, after, was a bit of a task.

From here I will shut up and let you enjoy a few of the underwater sights we have experienced in the past two weeks.

When you are floating on the surface, looking at the bottom, lobsters are hard to spot.  Do you see a lobster in this picture?

They like to hide under rock ledges and in holes.  Usually, you will only see an antenna sticking out, and that is all that is visible in the first picture (unless you really zoom in).

Bahamas Bound

This post will take you from Fort Myers, Florida to Hoffman Cay, Berry Islands Bahamas.  Due to excessive strong winds, the past month has been full of ‘hurry up and wait’.

We spent five days in Fort Myers visiting with our friend Steph, and gained Callie as a new friend…good times!

Damage from Hurricane Ian is still very evident.  We saw a lot of roof and window damage

And a few total collapses.

Since we had a rental car, we decided to complete our BIG provisioning trip before leaving for the Bahamas.  We spent $1000 packing the freezer and pantry, but this much food will last us a very long time!

After leaving Fort Myers, we traveled along the west coast of Florida and anchored off Everglades City very close to a sandbar where a flock of white Pelicans were settling down for the night.  They must sleep there often, because the strip of sand was too odiferous for them to have just landed…stinky!

From here we traveled around the southern tip of Florida to the Keys.

Key Largo was our destination.  We planned to anchor in Tarpon Basin to wait out a windy forecast, and prepare for our crossing to the Bahamas.  We know we are in Key Largo by the amazing water color, and the constant white trail our props create because the water is so shallow…even through the channel, we are churning up the sand.

Tarpon Basin did not disappoint, as a well protected anchorage with very friendly manatee who visit regularly.  The forecast, however, did disappoint!  We stayed in Key Largo for 17 days waiting for a favorable forecast to cross the Gulf Stream.  Fortunately, the timing worked to allow us to catch up with friends (Eddie & Gail on Seaquel, Tara & Allan on Follow Your Arrow, and (later) Julie & Randy on Knot Dreaming) who were also waiting for a weather window to cross…so we had a great time hanging with our tribe!

Seventeen days is a long time to stay in one place, but we did accomplish several boat projects, and we did a lot of playing!

We visited toilet seat cut.

Took several kayak and paddle board explorations through the mangroves.

Abandoned a day of snorkeling after getting a royal butt kicking from waves and wind as we attempted to take our dinghies 3 miles offshore to a reef.  These smiles are after we tucked back into the safety of the mangroves and stopped for lunch in a calm location.

We rented a car for a day and visited Key West.

Finally, on Feb 19 we were ready to move north to stage for a crossing on the 21st.  

The crews of Right Hand and Seaquel joined a volunteer organization committed to humanitarian and community building projects throughout the Caribbean.  The current project is to increase food security by supporting home gardens.  The Hope Fleet organization has partnered with the Bahamian Agricultural Ministry, and a Midwest U.S. University to design a program to teach participants the skills necessary to make gardens successful in the harsh conditions of the Bahamas.  Upon graduation from the class, each participant is given a bucket of supplies to get them started.  In this model the buckets will be used for drip irrigation, and the seeds are specially selected for the environment.  

Our part in this project is to transport and deliver the buckets.  The day before our departure we were able to tie up to the wall in No Name (that’s actually the name) Harbor to make loading easy. 

It actually was not easy…we loaded a LOT of buckets!  Right Hand was able to fit 170 buckets, and Seaquel loaded 130…woohoo, 300 buckets would soon be delivered to Nassau!  If you would like to learn more, please visit hopefleet.org

At first light on the morning of February 21 we left Biscayne Bay for an amazingly smooth and easy crossing.

Here are Seaquel and Knot Dreaming with Miami in the background.  We checked into the country at Great Harbor, and quickly headed for Hoffman Cay for a little rest and relaxation!

This is our anchorage at Hoffman Cay.

The most amazing helmet conch I have ever seen! Keith found it while we were conch fishing (I’ll get into the details of that activity in a future post).  This is not the type of conch you eat.  We brought it ashore to show the others, and get some pictures…then we returned it to a grass bed in deeper water.

Hiked to the blue hole.

Old age is awesome!

And now we are eight!

If you enlarge this picture and look towards the top, you will see our four boats at anchor.

Hoffman Cay is the island where Keith and I isolated for 8 weeks during the first Covid lockdowns in March 2020.  We were so happy to return and share this amazing place with our friends!