Another-other beautiful anchorage

Today we had a brisk sail from Hawksbill Cay to Allens Cay at the tip of the Exumas. With the 18+ knot wind on our beam, we were hustling along at 6 to 7 knots all day. It was a swift, pleasant day. Ellen prefers days like the one from Warderick Wells to Hawksbill Cay because the winds were a little lighter and we were moving at a sedate 3-4 knots. That sail was a fun one, in part because we took a super shallow-draft route to get from the anchorage to the Banks. I misread the chart and didn’t notice that our route would take us over a 4’ spot at low tide. But we picked our way across the sand, which had shifted since the chart was made, and never saw less than 5’ 8” which is more than enough for good old Cupcake.

Hawksbill Cay – another perfect anchorage.

Before heading up to Allens Cay today (where we made our first landfall in the Exumas back in 2012 and where we will finally depart the island chain in the next few days) we enjoyed two nights at Hawksbill. Went to shore, walked through the little palm trees into the hot hot scrubby interior of the island in search of colonial-era ruins.

We may have spotted the ruins when we got to a ridge after about 30 minutes of sweaty pathfinding, but by that point the girls were overheating and spooked about the rampant poisonwood in the area.

When we first arrived in the Berry Islands several months ago we were warned about poisonwood trees. It seems their leaves and bark contain an oil that is more rash-producing than poison ivy. Even standing under a poisonwood tree during a rainstorm can result in an outbreak.

Ellen fixates on and panics about two or three maladies each time we are in the Bahamas. This time she is allowing her lice-paranoia to fade (just a little). But swimmers ear and poisonwood have leapt to the top of the list, displacing even appendicitis. (She is just now regaling me with a story about a cruiser who had appendicitis AND a burst ovarian cyst at the same time. “It’s true!”)

In any event, we returned to the beach without finding the ruins or contracting poisonwood poisoning. What we did find was plenty of plastic crap. It is everywhere on the beaches of the Bahamas (and, presumably, beaches everywhere). Not to get all preachy, but really people, use less plastic. Single-use plastics, plastic packaging, plastic cups, plastic silverware are all an abomination and a blight.

Cloud that looks like a pig. YOU are a pig if you don’t start controlling the amount of plastic you throw away.

While Ellen chatted to a cruiser who was tanning (who does that anymore?) on the beach, Moss and I swam back to Cupcake. Then, because we didn’t know if Ellen was strong enough to drag Mr. Flowerpot back down the sand into the water all by herself, we swam back to the beach to help her with the dinghy. She says she could have managed just fine and we believe her.

We walked the beach and spoke with a crew member from one of the megayachts anchored offshore. He was sitting under a tent/pavilion keeping an eye on water toys and beach chairs. The tableau was set up on the chance that the party of 12 “old women…celebrating a 40th birthday” on the yacht wanted to come ashore. After the charter was over, he told us, the ship would spend two weeks in Fort Lauderdale before heading to the Mediterranean. “Well, we are headed to Freeport, Maine,” we said, just to watch the jealousy in his eyes.

Big yacht in the foreground and a teeny-tiny one in the background. Oh, wait…

There are more megayachts up in this part of the Exumas than we have seen since December. Today we passed at least six yachts of more than 150’. One of them was so large it came with a helicopter and landing pad. Another of the yachts was moored near us at Hog Cay the other day. When we saw the crew setting up the pavilion ashore, we dinghied over to ask them when the farmers market would begin. Turns out the captain and his brother (another crew member) were former sailor/liveaboards who grew up as sailboat rats in the Bahamas and Caribbean. They graciously offered to fill our water jugs if we needed it. We graciously declined–the water maker has been performing flawlessly. Today the solar panels were able to keep up with the demand from watermaker, the refrigerator, the GPS, and the autopilot on our sail to Allens Cay.

Does everyone call these rings “sun dogs?”