February 7, 2008.

Yesterday we ended up snorkeling again. There were 4 couples all with their dinghy’s anchored along the edge of the coral. Christy and I were swimming along when we heard our names being called out.

We looked up and saw that the other 3 couples were all in their dinghies. Part of me already knew why…….SHARK! We both put it into overdrive and reboarded the dinghy in record time. A couple of the other people saw the same shark again so we were done snorkeling this area for the day. We never saw him, but we don’t really feel the need to.

We went back down to the beach nearest our boat and snorkeled there for a while before calling it a day.

Today the wind was still from the wrong direction but it abated a bit, so we decided to head south. We were to leave with 3 other boats and had decided to wait until 0930 to let the seas lay down and to see if the winds would diminish even more.

In New Jersey you enter the ocean through inlets. Inlets are lined by jetties in an effort to control erosion and to limit the unpleasantness one might encounter while traversing the inlet. Not here, no inlets. They’re called “cuts” and are little more than gaps between cays that allow you to get out to the ocean side and deeper water.

We were anchored a quarter mile from the Cave Cay Cut and it was to be the beginning of our day. As we were pulling our anchor our friends the Freedoms arrived and dropped their anchor almost in the same spot we had just spent the last couple of days. Then we had to circle for 2 minutes because when we got to the corner and could see out the cut, the mail boat was coming in.

The mail boat is a small shoal draft freighter that ply’s the waters of the Bahamas working as a supply boat. It could be bringing anything from vegetables to propane, it even brings the mail. Oh yeah, and they won’t think twice about running you the hell over.

After allowing the mail boat to come in the cut the 4 of us headed out. Every cut is different; some have great reputations while others are only for locals in small high powered fishing boats. The Cave Cay Cut is one of the better straight forward cuts, or so they tell me.

Again back to Jersey, whenever the wind and the tide oppose each other in an inlet its going to be a sloppy and maybe even dangerous affair. Short standings waves that are set close together, it can be quite treacherous. Here in the Exhumas they have a name for this condition, it’s called a “rage”. Quite the visual name, it almost paints a picture and there are no butterflies or bluebirds in the picture.

I’m not sure if it was a blessing or a curse, but since we were going out with the tide, we were flying. This meant that you were going to get your ass royally kicked, but it would be over quickly. We were the third of four boats to go out so we got to watch as the 2 boats ahead of us were “raged” upon.

The first boat was Packet Inn an Island Packet that’s a little smaller than we are and while they got thrashed around a bit it looked manageable so we were encouraged. But then the second boat went through. It is a 37 foot trawler named Meermin (Dutch for mermaid) and since it’s a trawler they have no heavy keel to mute the violence of their pitching and yawing. All Christy could say was “holy shit, look at that!” It looked like 2 hits of acid and a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl.

While our ride was a bit boisterous we only had one huge wave that was really unpleasant. The thing just kept rising and rising as we headed up and over it and then there was nothing. No more wave, it just passed under us and dropped us straight down into the base of the next wave. I can’t begin to describe the violence or the amount of water we displaced as we completely crushed the next wave. The explosion of water from each side of the bow had to extend easily 50 feet on both sides of the bow. It was the most violent boat to wave collision we’ve ever experienced. As our bow crushed down into the wave, the water was forced out both sides and the bow plunged straight through the center and scooped the wave up and over. The side decks were filled to capacity and drained quickly through the scuppers. Then just a little more roughness and we were through and our breathing returned to normal.

The fourth boat through is named Unchained, it’s a Beneteau 38. She’s about 9,000 pounds lighter than we are so I was pretty sure they were in for an ass kicking. I never turned around to look because I wasn’t sure if our beating was over yet. But since Packet Inn was out past the turbulence they looked back in time to see almost all of Unchained’s keel out of the water. See, its not just cocktails and sunsets………

The ride down to Adderly Cut was only 12 miles but it was to be a long slow motor dead to windward. The wind wasn’t that bad but the wind had been blowing briskly for several days from the same direction so the sea state was pretty rough.

We ended up getting to Adderly Cut first so we led the way in. There’s no jetty, no navigation markers just a stone pile on a nearby cay to indicate that you’re in the right place or that what you’re seeing is what you think the chart is showing you. After the entire crew carefully checked and rechecked the charts and GPS we carefully turned and headed into the cut. Waves breaking to port and starboard are our only indication of the boundaries of the cut. Small surf good, big surf bad.

The tide was still ebbing and being opposed by the breeze. This time however we were fighting the tide as we entered the cut. The tide cut our Speed Over Ground to less than 4 knots at times as we alternately surfed waves and then sat through the troughs. The ride was tense because of our slow SOG; it just seemed to take forever to get inside.

The trip in although long was uneventful for the four of us and turned into a peaceful meandering ride to our chosen anchorage for the night. The trip in did require a bit of water reading to find the deep water to safely avoid the shallows. The anchorage for the night was a small pocket of deep water on the northwest side of Normans Pond Cay. The current is ripping through the anchorage but the surface of the water is calm, it’s very deceiving. It’s a lot more dangerous than it seems, fall off the boat and there’s no way you could swim back to it.

After lunch a complete asshole who happens to be a pilot decided pull some hot dog bullshit in the anchorage. I happen to be holding the camera when I heard him coming. It’s a seaplane coming low and hard, he’s going to do a touch and go, because with his tiny penis this is evidently the only way he can impress us. I can’t begin to describe how close he was to Packet Inn, you can just catch the tail of the plane in the left part of the picture. In the other picture you can see how close he came to Meermin.



60 seconds earlier Art had snorkeled out to check his anchors set and would probably been killed had he spent another minute out in front of his boat.

Then there were the Kayakers. Ten minutes before a group of 9 kayakers had passed through our anchored boats. They were from the states and had come down to kayak through the lower cays. They were loaded down with all their stuff and were stopping and camping every night before continuing on the next day. We asked one woman where they were headed and she told us Georgetown, that’s where we’re headed, still 20 miles away. We asked how far they travel each day and she didn’t know, we asked where they had set out from and she wasn’t sure of that either. I’m pretty sure her brain had died and her arms were still just paddling away.
The kayakers were spread out pretty far so their guide called them into the beach 400 yards ahead of us to take a break.

The people on the beach saw the plane bearing down behind the last kayaker on the water. They started screaming at him to turn and paddle hard for shore. He turned left and paddled furiously while the plane had to veer to the right to avoid killing him. No wonder there’s so many plane wrecks here to explore.

After the excitement slack tide arrived so Christy and I were able to snorkel for an hour or so. While floating about I came across a conch like I had never seen before. It was round, about 9 inches across with a triangular flange along the bottom edge. It was about 10 feet down so I dove down and when I picked it up and turned it over I almost shit myself. The bottom face was a giant mouth with 2 rows of flashing white teeth; I dropped it like it was hot and bolted for the surface. It landed on its back with its snarling teeth obvious from the surface.

I called Christy over to see what she thought of it. I explained what I had seen while she swam towards me. She was laughing right up to the moment she poked her face below the surface to see the snarling beast just a few feet below us. Even she had to do a triple take before she decided it was just an illusion on the shells surface. So I went back down and retrieved it, no it didn’t bite me, turns out she was right, just a really creepy shell. Don’t laugh; somebody’s getting it for Christmas.

After that it was back to the boat for a Mexican feast and then an early bedtime.