Heading back

Friday January 4th
We've been enjoying our time here at Little Farmers Cay on a mooring ball across from the government dock. We have a nice beach about 100 ft from the boat that we can walk Sara and Blue mornings with coffee, evenings with wine. The main town area is close enough by dink, and we have several other beaches to hit that aren't too far away either. We've gone snorkeling on a couple of reefs by dinghy ride and got to use our Hawaiian sling spear rod. The Bahamas are being over run with Lion Fish which is not a natural fish to the area. It is poisonous and hides around the coral. There are other things bad about them too but we'll let you do the Internet work on them; there will be a quiz when we get back to NY about Lion Fish. Back to the snorkeling; I eliminated 5 of them from 2 reefs. What you do is spear them; they are very dossal so its easy to put the spear right up next to them and let her go, then come up and fling them as far as you can off the end of your pole. At that point shark, grouper or other fish will eat them. I did miss a couple of nice fish for eating, but that's ok, I'd rather wait for larger ones. We should be able to get outside the bay onto Exuma Sound next week with our dink, where there should be some larger fish. There is a festival on the island this weekend with some Class A local boats racing. Lots of food and all the locals have their music turned way up and with bars every 50ft made out of any piece of wood they can find as a bar and all the bottles lined up, but they all have their government permits hanging in a frame. Cruisers everywhere too. Some of the restaurants are trying to hold some games for the cruisers, it’s been fun. Arline got to be one of the judges for the "Men’s best Legs Contest" I did make it to the finals with my cart wheel.
Met up with Sid and his dog Bo again; we crossed from Florida with him. Sid left us in GHC while we were doing the engine repair to do as he had crew going out that he needed to get somewhere. It was good to catch up with him, wait till Sara finds out that Bo is back. Sara was really in love with Bo to the point of embarrassment.

Saturday January 5th
Today we went for a dinghy ride with a bunch of other people on a mission; to find a cave that one of the other cruises had been to. We got ashore and be said "I think it's a short walk this way". Great! A short while later we found ourselves in the thick of it and Vern still saying; “It should be right here”. It started to feel like the filming of "Club Paradise" until the Boy Scout in me took over and we found the marker he was looking for. Up the mountain with a great view of Exuma Sound and now we're looking for the cave. HEY IT’SOVER HERE, YOU WALKED RIGHT BY IT AND DIDN’T FALL IN!! It was a very cool thing being in the cave, no bats, but there was water in it that one of the ladies got in and swam around. The whole time we were in there we kept saying "I wish Jill was here". I think everybody got a group photo, it was a great time. Then back to the boat, walk the dogs and we zipped over to the sailing races. We watched the first race and got into some nice positions to take photos from the dinghy. Then we saw some other dinks rafted up together and tied up to the end of it as it was near the finish line. Now all of the racing sailboats are headed down to the last leg, close to the wind and weaving in and around all the boat anchored to watch! I thought If I was racing I'd love it if those stupid dinghies would pull up just a bit, but I couldn't convince anybody of the idea. They use boards to hike way out on these rigs and they came so close to us that the guys out on the board had to lift his legs over our dingy as we ducked out of the way! Way a great day it was in Little Farmers. Then there was Dinner, the racing awards, speeches, and music. Oh all of this was held on the runway at the airport, a few planes came and went with people standing 100 ft away from the runway, people drinking, eating, driving and dancing on the runway. I know Amy; FOD would be a huge issue!

Sunday January 06
Quite a number of boats left today for points south and north, we have decided to stay for a few more days because too many boats with all be looking for new anchorages at the same time. So we’ll sit here let them fight it out tonight, move on in a couple of days and them when we show up were they where there should be less boats to deal with. As we are watching Leslie And Dave leave we’re saying that he’s too close to the rocks, and then BOUNCE, BOOM, Water Line is showing, Black SMOKE, then 15 seconds latter he ‘s off. We watched the Super Bowl at the Little Farmers Yacht Club with a few other folks, great game, what was the half time thing suppose to be. I mean the average age of people watching the game is; what? And the average age of the person there, who has spent lots of money, even older and they give the people, what was that anyway. Great marketing research on display there folks.


Tuesday January 8
We dropped of the mooring ball this morning to start heading north to Staniel Cay and the big Majors anchorage. We had studied the rocky cut enough and headed out with confidence. Still another part was going to be more skinny water and we decided at the last second to follow everybody’s advice and keep it in the deep water. So we headed out the cut to Exuma Sound where there was several hundred feet of water. We turned north, had a little bit of wind and put the pole out for fishing. About half way Arline spotted a fish flying across the water being chased by another fish, a Mahi Mahi. We where able watch for a while and I drew a line from where we saw him back to behind our boat and it ran right across our line. Then things travel in schools and 30 seconds later FISH ON!! It didn’t take too long to get him right next to the boat an he was beautiful about 3 ft long. They are brilliant Blue and Green, as he jumped up in the air, spit the lure out and took off.