2011.7 - Grand Cay, Abaco, Bahamas

We had such a great time cruising with our buddy boats Blue Heaven and Kiwanda last summer over to Grand Cay, we figured why not do it again this year? We know the way, we know some good spots and really want to explore some new ones, and maybe the weather will be better this time! Like last year, we will be staying in shore accommodations on Grand Cay and doing day trips to the reefs and beaches to soak up some sun, soak up some rum, and hopefully catch a few fish of some kind.

Saturday June 25

Top Cat (crew Jonathan, Jayne, and Michael) and Blue Heaven (crew Bret and Sandy) left Fort Pierce Inlet about 0730, bound for White Sand Ridge on the Little Bahama Bank, where we will rendezvous with Kiwanda(crew Jim, Beth, Steve, Debbie, Jamie, Scott, Jim, and Kathy) leaving from Stuart. It is a great day for a crossing, with seas 1-2 feet and sunny skies. We find some weedlines about 30 miles out and fish for a while with no success. With almost naval precision, we arrive at the designated point within 10 minutes of our appointed time just about simultaneously. We are getting good at fleet ops. After clearing Customs and Immigration at Walkers Cay, we make the short trip to Grand Cay under a rapidly darkening sky. We had reserved two of the nice two bedroom cottages at Rosie's Place, the same ones we had last year. But in De Islands, Mon, the concept of a reservation is a somewhat fluid one, and we couldn't move into our cottage until tomorrow. But Rosie, our gracious and resourceful host, said he would find us something. While resourceful, Rosie is not a magician, and the best he could come up with for us was a couple of run-down rooms at a place next door that had seen better days. So we trudged our stuff over in the now-pouring rain and got showered and changed for dinner over on Kiwanda. All 13 of us fit in Kiwanda's big main salon, where we had penne ala vodka with pancetta and chicken thighs with balsamic caramelized onions (as veteran readers of these logs know, we like to eat well. Very well.)

Sunday June 26

Our first full day in the Islands! And we spend about half of it making sure we are getting our cottage and getting moved in. We finally do, and the two small boats with the whole herd aboard run out to the patch reefs just a few miles away to look for conch and fish. We snorkeled a couple of nice scenic appreciate- the-beauty-type spots before we unleashed the dogs of war and started chasing fish. As usual, most fish got the upper hand, but we got some nice hogfish and 2 small groupers along with 9 conch between the two boats. Not bad for a couple of hours. We beached the boats at Double Breasted Cay to clean our fish and splash around in the clear water on the pure white sand beach. Life is good. This trip we decided we would get some of the locals to clean our conch for us. We know how to do it ourselves, of course. But it is not fun, and the combination of very slippery conch and a razor sharp knife is not a happy one. And certainly the locals can use the money. Watching them clean a conch really makes you feel like a thumb-fingered idiot - it takes them like 30 seconds. Dinner tonight is Thai peanut baked hogfish with basmati rice and oriental cole slaw, served al fresco on the picnic tables in front of our cottage. Life is REALLY good.

Monday June 26

Today doesn't look too bad - overcast but not really windy. While we wait for everyone to get up and moving, we had a walk around Grand Cay. It doesn't take long - the Cay is not much over a square mile, with I'm guessing 500 inhabitants. It seems a fairly prosperous settlement - neat and clean with some new government buildings and a nice looking school. Like everywhere else we have been in the Bahamas, the locals have a wave and a smile as we pass by. Today we again load up all 13 of us in the two little boats, but today we will go a little farther afield. We head out the small boat cut from Grand Cay and round the corner to Wells Bay. Passing through the cut by Tom Brown's Cay, we are out in the open Atlantic. We will be heading west about 10 miles to some really nice reef we visited last year - big patches coming up almost to the surface from 30 feet, with some shallow grass and small patches behind the big reef. We SAW a lot of big fish, but they saw us first and retreated back into their lairs deep in the reef or took off. But we got a few, and some conch, and some nice yellowtail snapper hook and line. We headed back the way we came, running along the 100 foot depth contour to avoid any nasty surprises. The bottom machine is showing some great drop offs to fish, but it is getting pretty rough, and we don't want to stop. After a 45 minute head sea pounding, we round the corner back onto the banks, and stop at the long white beach at Wells Bay to celebrate our day. By carefully reading the water, we found a place we could beach the boats, and set about cocktail hour with enthusiasm. Everyone got a nice long walk and found some beachcombing treasures to bring home. We were having so much fun we stayed almost until sunset. Usually it is not a good idea to do this, since with the sun down low it is very hard to read the water and judge your depth and see obstructions. But sunset was also high tide, and we followed our GPS breadcrumbs back to the dock without incident.

Tuesday June 28

Today was kind of a repeat of Sunday - Walk the town, load up the small boats and head out to the patch reefs, snorkel all around, shoot some fish, find some conch, head to Double Breasted Cay, clean the fish, catch a shark or two, bob around in the shallows with a cocktail, and head back to Grand Cay for a feast. If you have to settle into a routine, it's a damm fine routine to settle into. I believe I could happily do it every day for the rest of my life.

Wednesday June 29

Today is a decent looking day, and we take advantage of it by heading out for an exploratory expedition south to Great Sale Cay, about 25 miles, to look for a blue hole that I had heard about and found a rough position for on Google Earth. Blue holes are underwater caves, drowned springs really, in the limestone bedrock. Always slightly spooky, and almost always full of fish. I have an obsession with blue holes, and everyone else is humoring me. We took Kiwanda today, with Top Cat as a scout boat, and in case the approach to the blue hole was too shallow for Kiwanda. On the way, we checked out the anchorage at Great Sale, where we waited out a squall in the company of some big cruisers, including a power catamaran that made even Kiwanda look small. About 4 miles south of the anchorage, we got to the coordinates from Google Earth and started a search. About 300 yards away, there was a telltale dark spot on the flats, and there we were! It was not too impressive really - it was a "dead hole", a blue hole that had become plugged with sand so there was no tidal flow to keep the water clear and support the coral and other life. It was a 40 foot deep, almost perfectly round hole about 100 feet across sitting in 5 feet of water. Top Cat guided Kiwanda in, and we both anchored right on the edge of the hole. There were some nice mutton snappers, which hauled ass as soon as they saw us, and some hogfish which we shot. But the big thing was lionfish, hundreds of lionfish. These introduced exotic menaces have become extremely common in the Bahamas, but this was the most we have seen all in one place. They practically coated the vertical limestone walls of the blue hole. On the way back, Top Cat stopped off at Barracouta Rocks, while Kiwanda headed for Double Breasted Cay, where Jim was able to pick his way in anchor just off our favorite little beach. Top Cat pulled in later and rafted off, and we cleaned fish and had cocktails. The best fish of the day was caught right the by Steve, a nice little Nassau Grouper. Michael wanted to catch a shark, so we put a whole fish carcass on our heaviest rig and put it out. After a couple of false starts, he hooked into a beast, a bull shark of 200 or so pounds. For the next half hour, Michael and the shark fought back and forth over the same hundred feet of line, but mammalian endurance finally won out over chondrichthyian brute strength, and we landed and released his prize.

Thursday June 30

The weather today was ominous, and thunderstorms were predicted for later in the afternoon. The girls wisely decided to stay at home, do some kayaking around Grand Cay, and generally relax. The guys wanted one more shot at fish, and so the two small boats headed out. We would both stay within VHF range of Kiwanda, who would keep her radar running and keep us advised of any storms a brewin'.

Blue Heaven headed out for Barracouta Rocks and Top Cat went down the north side of the cays to Rhoda Rocks, planning to meet up with Blue Heaven at some point. The predicted storms developed and came out of the south. Blue Heaven was the southernmost boat, and got headed back to Grand Cay in time to miss the storm. From where we were in Top Cat, it looked like if we went farther east to Strangers Cay, the storm would miss us and we could head back after it had passed. We were cleaning up on nice grouper, having our best spearfishing day of the trip, when the storm took a turn. Kiwanda confirmed it was heading right for us. Perhaps it would have been better to ride it out at anchor, but I have a lot of faith in Top Cat's seakeeping ability, so we decided to punch through to the other side. When we hit the gust front, it was maybe 40-50 knots, VERY rough, and near zero visibility. Going back the way we came was out of the question, too many patch reefs coming up out of nowhere. We needed to get through Strangers Cay Channel and on to the banks where we would have good water the whole way. I could barely see the bow of the boat, navigating by chart plotter and depth sounder, doing OK but not making much speed when BANG! I stuck her on a sand bore. They are not charted, and move around with the current all the time, and are one of the excellent reasons why you need good light to navigate in the Bahamas. But at least it was just sand, not reef, and I was heading upwind. When I shut down the engines and trimmed them up, we blew off the bar and I was able to get moving again and feel my way around the bore into deep water. Then it was a fairly routine, if very rough, ride the rest of the way home to Grand Cay. If you are going to be dumb, you'd better be tough.

Friday July 1

Our original plan was for the fleet to head home on Saturday. So this morning, all three boats went over to fuel. It is going to be very busy here over the Fourth of July weekend, and some boats are already arriving. We want to make sure we fuel now, before the fuel dock (the one and only fuel dock within 40 miles in any direction) runs out of gas. While filling up, we are listening to the weather and not liking what they are forecasting for Saturday - winds north to northeast Saturday and Sunday. Anything out of the north is the kiss of death for crossing the Gulf Stream. So we decide to git while the gittin's good and head back today. Within an hour, we are all packed up and ready to go. It was a good call - we had the best crossing I've ever done - you could have water skied across the Gulf Stream it was so flat and glassy. Top Cat stopped at the drop off on the edge of the bank to fish for a while, and Michael caught a half dozen huge triggerfish to add to his haul for the week. We didn't find anything fishy on the way across the stream, and we were back in Ft. Pierce clearing US Customs by 3:00.

2011 Grand Cay Album