Great Habour Cay will always hold a special place in our
heart that’s warm and dear to us.
Our 1st year there was when just 5 miles out of the marina our
engine over heated severally and needed to be rebuild, and just before Christmas. So we spent a month there waiting for parts
and doing the work on the engine. While there we meet many of the American
landowners, and became friends with everybody that worked at the marina. We were
invited out to go fishing and then there was The New Year’s Party and the friendly/helpful
mechanic that helps us rebuild Kasidah’s engine.
Our 2nd year there we stayed just about the whole
winter season, with the highlight being when Amy and Jeremy come for a weeks
visit. We really got to know the island and all of its history, as we explored
every place on the island we could. All the while some of the best times were
when other boaters would come in, we’d spend time with them, explore and share
our knowledge of the island with them.
The 3rd year we were going to stay only a while
but we ended up nursing our dog Sara for a few hard weeks until she passed away
in Arline’s lap. We buried her on one of the most beautiful isolated beaches we've ever
been to or seen. We've never seen anybody there and its a few miles from the marina by dingy. So now we
call it Sara’s Beach. We made some good
friends that year as many of us were there, but then tragedy hit the island
when the communication towers came crashing down leaving the island in a total
lock out. With family and kids in the states we like staying connected through
the internet. With out it we couldn't stay so we followed friends to Grand Bahama and found ORYC very comfortable for the rest
of the year.
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| Our catch on the way over |
The next year we only visited for a short while from
Grand Bahama. We were blown away by the reception of
visitors from the friends on GHC. Weather windows and other factors set the
visit to only a week. We did get to fish, look for conch, and visit Sara’s
Beach. But it was nice to get back to ORYC and the pool, real food stores, and more
than two restaurants to choose from.
We were really looking forward to our trip and visit this
year to GHC.
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| Female Mahi Mahi |
We left ORYC at the crack of dawn on New Years Eve Day, right behind another sail boat, Claus and Rosie. It was a
good sail, again the wind was close to on the nose and we could have sailed the
whole way,…but we had a time schedule to get in by dark, so we had our motor on
to push us and extra knot making 6.5 or better shaving 3 or more hours off the
trip. We actually passed another sailboat out this trip. Fair is fair, we both were motor sailing.
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| Yum Yum |
Fished all the way there and caught a Mahi Mahi only 3 hours out of GB. It was
really a good fight, While cleaning the fish we had some "Fresh as could be meat" in the
cockpit and then for the next few nights had it different ways.
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| From strong trees grow strong trees |
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| New Palms growing at Sara's site |
We visited Sara’s Beach and found it in good shape, the palm
tree we planted last year had taken to sprout and had grown an impressive
about. We wanted to transplant another one this year so we started looking but
couldn't find any coconuts that had started to sprout. We did find a good sized
palm tree that we were able to pull up and take in the dinghy. As you can see
from the photo of it in our dingy it came from a great palm tree and was one of
only a few that had taken. From strong trees grow great trees. We dug a hole to
place it in and watered it. We hope that when we are in our 80’s we can look at
some satellite image and see the tree on Sara’s Beach.
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| Brought our dive gear |
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| out conching with Claus and Rosy |
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| catch of the day |
We hit our favorite snorkeling spots and got Lobster and
fish, then we went to a shallow area and got some conch. There wasn’t too much
to do this time on the island, the Beach bar had been rebuilt and looked great.
We used our bikes and went to the southern end of the island, sharks creek. One
of the most beautiful array of colors between the shallow and deep water, sand
and tress we’ve ever seen. We also speared Lion Fish. They are not native to the Bahamas and you are asked to kill them when you can. they are poisonous if you touch their barbs, and they have many. They eat large amounts of small fish, have no natural enemy in the waters, so they are not quick to move and easy to hunt. After you cut the barbs off with a pair of scissors they are just another fish, We caught several of them, cleaned and fried them up. Very good eating!! Check out the video we used oh "How to Clean"
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| Lion fish for dinner |
After a week of biting no-see-ms, favorable winds and tides, and
the need for another Mahi-Mahi in our cooler we decided to head north and then back to
the pool, and hot tub in Grand Bahama.
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| how to take the poisonous barbs of |
No fish on the way home but a nice well timed trip and a
welcome party at the dock for us.
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| now it's a regular fish |
