currently at:  Middle Bight, Andros, Bahamas
current date:  10 May 2005

Other than the two nights we spent at Flamingo Cay in the company of Blind Date, we haven't shared a single anchorage with any other cruising boats in nearly three weeks - until now. When we came in to Middle Bight nobody was here but some bonefishing skiffs from a nearby resort; later that day three sailboats arrived, and the next day another sailboat and a trawler came in. Seems crowded!

But we can't complain, because we came here specifically to meet one of those boats - Calm Seas, which was carrying watermaker parts for us. Glenn helps out Spectra by carrying a small inventory of parts, and sometimes doing specific deliveries such as this. We'd been in touch by ham radio for the past week to coordinate things; it was great to finally meet Glenn and his wife Betsy, and pick up our parts. Installing them was a simple task, and now we have water again. (A big tip of the hat to Spectra Watermakers for their excellent customer service and willingness to correspond by email, and to Glenn Brown for his help.)

The anchorage at Middle Bight is behind an island called Gibson Cay, which according to the guidebook has an oceanic blue hole. Blue holes are water-filled sinkholes that have been created by, in many cases, faults allowing seepage of water into the limestone, which gets eaten away and forms a big hole. Some blue holes are deep spots in otherwise shallow water; they were formed when the region was above sea level. (In fact there's one like this close to here, but unfortunately it turned out to be not very interesting for snorkeling.) Others are inland, and some of them contain fresh or brackish water - and usually small crabs and bright red shrimp. We visited one on Raccoon Cay in the Jumentos and had a nice swim! The one on Gibson Cay is "oceanic" - it's connected to the ocean by subterranean caverns, so it's saltwater, and contains fish that have popped over for a visit.

The guidebook didn't say exactly where the blue hole was located, so we brought along the machete, expecting to have to tromp around a bit. The first difficulty was finding a landing place - Gibson Cay is surrounded by shallow water, and the only evident beach was on the windward side. But as we dinked by, we found a tiny opening in the mangroves leading to a small lagoon, which in turn branched out into several tidal creeks. It's a lot of fun exploring places like this by dinghy, so we put the blue hole on hold and rowed around a bit, eventually finding a place we could land and walk a short distance to the windward beach.

When we returned to the dinghy we tried another channel, which took us to a strange lunar landscape of flat limestone slabs that had more holes than swiss cheese. But at the end of the channel we spotted water across the limestone - dark blue water - it was the blue hole! We tied the dinghy to a mangrove, grabbed our masks and fins, and trotted over to do a little snorkeling. The blue hole turned out to be about 40 feet deep, with two holes leading out on one side, and one on the opposite side. Britt swam down into one and found another way back out into the blue hole. There weren't a lot of fish, but we did see yellowtail snappers and some small schoolmasters, as well as a large colony of little blue hermit crabs.

That afternoon we went out for a more serious fish-hunting snorkel. This meant going out in fairly rough water, since the wind was still blowing pretty good from the east. We found some beautiful elkhorn formations - unfortunately, with hardly any fish around them. To find the fish, we ventured into deeper water, where there were fewer coral heads, but nice ledges and canyons. I speared a couple of small fish, while Britt went after bigger game. He was way out in a deep canyon, after a dog snapper and almost out of air when a school of yellow jacks came by, and boom, he speared one. Those guys are so big that even when you put a hole in them they can put up a pretty good fight; when I spotted him (actually I saw the school first, then I saw Britt's blue swim fins) he was trying to bash the fish against a rock, to drive in the spear and subdue it. By the time he finally surfaced, gasping, he was feeling a little faint. As he swam with it back to the dinghy, I went after the school, but they moved quickly away, so I turned back toward the dinghy as well.

And the first thing I saw was a 5-foot reef shark, coming straight at me! I pointed my spear in its direction, and kept swimming at it; the shark decided it didn't like that, and turned around, so that I was essentially following the shark toward the dinghy. Every once in a while the shark turned to swim around to the side and then back toward me, but when it did that I swam toward it (based on the premise that I'd rather be following a shark, than be followed by a shark) and it would veer off (probably based on exactly the same premise with regard to humans). I figured that it must have been attracted by the thrashing of Britt's fish. In fact, it had approached Britt while he was swimming toward the dinghy; he'd turned on his back, keeping the fish high in the air, and poked the butt end of his spear right on the tip of the shark's nose to discourage it. Which was a lot braver than I would have been...I'd have said, "Here, Mr. Sharkie, have a nice fish!" But Britt hung on to his big fish, so we have lots of meat for the next few days.

Which is a good thing, because we're going to be underway for the next few days. The weather is looking promising for a pleasant Gulf Stream crossing back to the US, so we've plotted out a course for Savannah, GA, where we will start working on finding a place to put Windom up until our next cruise. We'll be underway for about four days, and I'll try to post an update or two for that virtual passage-making experience. Once we get a real net connect, we will be posting many more photos from the past month, some of our mpeg movies, and updates to some of the informational pages on our site, as well as our regular posts on what we're doing. We'll also set up a mailing list for folks who want to be notified when Windom sails again. So please stay tuned.