Hawksbill and Shroud Cays

It was time to get back into the Exuma Park to see more of this beautiful part of the world. Staniel Cay was fun, but in a busy Caribbean way.   The beauty of the Exumas is the real star and you just have to get out into these remote anchorages and go explore.

About and hour and a half north of Staniel is Hawksbill.  It is a fairly well protected anchorage, and incredibly we were only boat there.   Here is this mile and a half long beautiful soft white beach and we are the only boat to enjoy it.  There were some coral heads close enough to the back of the boat that we jumped in to swim over and check them out.   Then we took the dinghy to the beach and just walked and walked.

It reminded me of the last time I was the only boat anchored on a beautiful beach.   We were sailing in Antigua and Barbuda during the 25th anniversary of our good friends, Joe and Winnie Thompson.  Naturally as Captain of the Ship I can perform all kinds of functions, including renewing ones wedding vows.  It did not carry any weight of the law, but no one cared.   It was a cool ceremony on a beautiful beach.  Umm..nice thoughts.

Note to self:   Next trip to the Exumas we must bring Kayaks.   There are so many places that are calling you to explore them but they are maybe a ft. deep.   Oh well, now we will have to come back.

All by ourselves.

We should have stayed at Hawksbill.   However, the next day we moved Rock Chalk just two miles north to Shroud Cay.  Shroud is open to the south, plus it gets quite a bit of ocean surge wrapping around the island from the southeast.   It is one of those mind boggling questions of "How does the Ocean Work?"   How do these big rollers wrap around an island and still effect an anchorage on the protected side?    Believe me it does.   It was a rockin and rollin night.   Practically threw me out of bed around 1:30 in one particularly steep wave that hit the anchorage.   The one neat thing about Shroud however, is that we could take the dinghy up an estuary, basically a creek that went from the bank side of the island to the deep water sound side of the island.   We motored up this creek an hour before high tide, so the water was rushing from the ocean through the creek headed for the sound.   It is maybe a 3-4 kt. current.   Pretty strong.   We were rewarded by this beautiful beach on the far side that we had to explore, but the real fun was the float trip.   We just got back into the ding and let her rip.  Shelley and I put our snorkel masks and fins on and she held the front of the ding and I took the back.    We floated down this estuary almost across the island.   Coral, fish, a ray, and beautiful clear water was our reward.  Plus it was interesting to see the bottom of the mangroves that cover the banks from an underwater viewpoint.   Their roots go way down in the salt water.   Fun day, but the rolling?????????

Red sky at night...

Marc