Right Hand Life: 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.