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December 31st,
(Great Sale Cay to Spanish Cay)
Wow, New Year’s Eve already. We’re heading to Spanish Cay today which we’ve read has one of the nicest marinas in Bahamas. It will be about a four hour trip from Great Sale Cay today. From the eaves dropping on the radio it sounds like all the other boaters are heading towards Green Turtle Cay. We can hear them chat on the radio about Junkanoo. They are all planning to reach their anchorages in time to join in the celebration. We hope that Spanish Cay will be quieter for Ziggy’s sake. We’re not into fireworks and loud noises for the New Year’s because of the stress it puts on Ziggy and well all dogs in general. I think that’s why Larry purposely chose Spanish Cay thinking it would be a nice quiet place for Ziggy. Well it was another amazingly beatuiful day cruising again. The water’s flat with absolutely no ripples on the water. The water looks like an aquamarine Jell-o. Just unbelievable.
SPANISH CAY We take the recommended course into the Spanish Cay Marina and the water below us is still uncomfortably shallow. You can literally see everything on the bottom, as if the water is a magnifying glass. We had a dolphin accompany us for a brief time today. He or she was alone and played off the bow and its wake for a short distance. He was beautiful in the clear aqua water and you could really see him amazingly well, even looked like he winked at us as he turned on his side to get a better look at Ziggy and I riding on the bow sprit looking down at him. He didn’t stay long though and Ziggy was making a racket when he caught sight of him. I’m assuming that’s why he left, I think would’ve left too after to listening to Ziggy’s excited screeching.
GHOST MARINA The day has been perfect for us, no wind and the waters were beautifully calm. We hailed Spanish Cay Resort and headed into the marina past the rocky man-made breakwater. We’re coming in at mid-low tide which gave us the perfect amount of water beneath us. As we came around the exposed breakwater there were only a couple other boats in the huge marina (huge for these areas I would think). There was only one large sports fisher and one pretty large sailboat. The rest of the marina was empty. There were so many empty slips that I wondered why. It was almost like a ghost town or should I say ghost marina. We tied up to the dock with the help of a nice young black man. As we settled in we were wondering why the place was so empty. The large sports fisher next to us looked as if the owners have gone home to the states for a few weeks as it was all closed up and that just left one other couple on their sailboat. Well, we wanted peace and tranquility for the New Year celebration and it looks like we are going to get it. The place is rustic and looks like it had some pretty significant hurricane damage, as many of the trees and shrubs are shredded bare and there are several broken branches and limbs still lying around. Lots of things look broken and much hasn’t been picked up yet. As I walked Ziggy around my first thoughts we “what a dump” as Betty Davis would have said in one of her old movies but we soon began to see the benefits of this uncrowded place. We were pretty much going to have the place to ourselves except for a few people. The lady in the office was very
nice and friendly. We asked if the restaurant was open and she
After lunch we took a little walk around the Cay. It is very small, long and narrow and quite walkable. You could easily walk from one side to the other. The Atlantic beaches were just steps away from the Sea of Abaco. There were a few cottages sprinkled here and there separated by the thick shrubbery. The cottages are pretty isolated from each other and obviously this place likes to maintain privacy between cottages. I think that’s a good thing. On the Atlantic side we found what used to be a little bar that was built over the ocean on poles. It was over the protected waters behind the reef. This building looks to have sustained quite a bit of storm damage too. It seemed abandoned and somewhaqt neglected though when we explored it we could see it was in the process of being painted and slowly being put back together. I can’t understand why they say it’s “off season” here in the Bahamas because to me the season it great. We loved the nearby beach and decided this was too good to be true to have this beautiful beach and water all to our selves so we rushed back to get our swim suits and give the water a try.
SEA MONSTERS We came back with all our beach gear and it was so fun to watch as Ziggy immediately immersed himself in the clear calm waters. He was so entertained, swimming and running up and down the beach, examining everything and poking his nose in holes and chasing moving images of fish in the clear waters. It was a joy to watch him thoroughly enjoying the surroundings and not have to worry about bothering other people. He was totally entertained. We just couldn’t believe we had this beautiful beach to ourselves. We waded into the shallow clear waters with amazing white powdery sandy bottoms. The water was surprising cold though and took us a while to get used to it, so we slowly waded in until Larry noticed a thing skirting up to us in the water with bright yellow stripes ringed around it. It looked like a miniature snake! It was only about 15” long but we got out of the water so fast that it must have been a funny sight if someone had been there to see it. I didn’t know the both of us could run so fast and lift our feet so high out of the water as we ran to the safety of the dry sand. Once out of the water…….we tried to slowly to creep back, little by little, to get a better look at this sea monster. We watched it for awhile as it slithered around sideways just like a snake would on dry sand. Finally we just decided to go down the beach a ways to try another spot. We weren’t going to let the little sea monster deter our enjoyment of this beautiful place. The water where we went in a second time was totally clear of anything so we could get a clear view. We checked it out thoroughly before going in again. We anxiously waded in and began to relax and just float in the water. We were just beginning to feel comfortable when again Larry spotted another one of these snakes, slithering towards us. Obviously these little critters were coming out of holes in the white sand below. That was it for us and the water today. We’re not fond of swimming around with little snakes in the water. Yuk! We found out later from a guy on the dock that these little “sea monsters” as we thought of them were nothing more than little harmless moray eels. He said, “They are harmless and won’t bother you unless you step on them and then they can give you a pretty bad swelling from their bite!” He said they do come out of holes in the sand. He also said you can pick them up and they’ll wrap around your wrists like bracelets. No thank you very much!
NO PEACE AND QUIET There was one other occupied
boat in the marina. It was a sailboat. They guy on it started running his
generator just after noon and ran the dam thing all day long. It was driving me
nuts because it was ruining the serenity of the place. We have plenty of power
at the dock so what’s the problem?
NEW YEARS EVE Tonight was New Years Eve and we decided we’d go in for dinner. The manager said the resort was having a private party of 40 people with a band that they were flying in but we could still eat in the dining room and could go out and enjoy the band afterwards. We got dressed and headed up to the restaurant at 7:30 and sure enough the sailboat couple that ran their generator all day had decided to join us. What the heck we thought. We’re the only two boats there. They apologized for the generator noise and seemed really sorry for the inconvenience and once they did, all was forgotten. From the sounds of it, he had a lot more problems than he let on earlier in the day. I don’t think it would have bothered us quite so much if they had explained their dilemmas earlier in the day. She was fun loving and full of laughter so it turned out to be an enjoyable evening. We found out we had a lot of similar experiences because they left the west coast (Seattle) and cruised south through the canal and up to Florida like we did, stopping at some of the same places we did. So we listened to their adventures or should I say misadventures as it sounds like they had one problem after another everywhere they cruised. It was an interesting evening though but we decided to call it an early night. They are Beth and Ron from “Gypsy Wind”.
FRONT COMING We knew a strong FRONT was headed this way and due to arrive to arrive by Tuesday. Beth and Ron said you don’t want to be here in Spanish Cay during the front because at high tide the breakwater is almost covered with water and there’s no protection. They said they had already had one bad experience there during the last Front and were heading out to an anchorage for the night close to Green Turtle Cay and then head into the protection of Green Turtle Cay at high tide before the Front arrives. They said they were at Spanish Cay during the last Front and experienced 30-35 knots winds and she said there were 6-8 foot seas splashing over the breakwater. We had a hard time imaging that but we didn’t want to experience that either. We noticed that it was true during low tide the breakwater is barely showing above the water so we could see that it probably doesn’t provide much protection except in perfect conditions. They left that afternoon, along with a new slew of problems as now their GPs and Chart Plotter went out. Sometimes boating is just that way. We spent one more day at Spanish Cay just lounging around enjoying the serenity of having the place to ourselves with beautiful waters and a magnificent sunset all to ourselves. That afternoon though the place started to fill up. People started arriving from all over in little fishing skiffs. We guessed they had been out fishing for the day and were coming back to their rented condos at Spanish Cay. We decided to get in the water
of the marina and clean the water line of the boat. The water seemed to flush
through the marina so we weren’t worried about the water being tainted or
dirty. On the other hand the water was so clear that we spent a long time
earlier watching a sting ray circling around under the docks. It was amazing to
see him so close and clear. While we were cleaning the boat we noticed a chunk
was missing out of the starboard stabilizer and figured it must have happened at
dock during hurricane Wilma, back in Florida. The boat was functioning well
with the damage so Larry figures he’ll repair it when we get back. The waters
were so clear around the boat that you could literally see sting rays and small
nurse sharks along with lots of other fish that we couldn’t identify.
We had a delicious vegetable wrap at the restaurant and dinner aboard that night and prepared to leave the next morning before the front was due to arrive. We had to arrive at the entrance to Green Turtle Cay at high tide so we will have enough depth below us to get in to the marina.
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Can’t he plug in? The wind was drifting out
way so not only did we have to listen to it running all day; we had to smell the
exhaust too. Finally Larry walked down the dock and asked him what he was
doing. He said his power cord didn’t reach the outlet and Larry said “Why don’t
you move to another slip then where you can reach?” 
