Highborne to Shroud Cay

Exumas Baby!!!!

We departed Nassau on April 11^th for the Exumas!!  We traveled in the company of another boat, Le Bonne Vie, from St. Pete, FL!

Crossing the Yellow Banks was fun; I sat up on the bow as lookout and pointed out the coral heads to Ransom.  It is truly amazing to see straight to the bottom in water up to 30ft deep and spot a sea star on the seafloor. 

We made a pit stop at Allen Cay to see the iguanas and say adieu to Bonne Vie before moving on to Highborne Cay.

The anchorage in Highborne is nice, lots of room, good holding, and plenty of room ashore to let the dogs have some off leash time.

I took this picture at dawn, the sky and water blend into one;  the line you see is our anchor chain under water.

Highborne sunrise

There were a lot of big boats here and for the first time Vitte looks very small to us.

Spyboat

There is a nice reef off of Highborne with a healthy ecosystem.  We spent the better half of our second morning here swimming with the fishes and identifying the different species with our reef guide cards.

We moved to Shroud Cay on Friday the 13^th and our jinx for the day was realizing our holding tank was leaking (YUCK!!!).  Probably the worst job on board is fixing a stinky, smelly, leaking holding tank.  However, we got the job done and hopefully this will be the last time we have to work on that.

Shroud Cay, an uninhabited island, is part of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park.  The island itself is a rocky archipelago that surrounds mangrove forests and is bisected in several places by tidal creeks.  We packed little Freyja for a day trip and went exploring, but we didn’t hit the tide right and ended up pulling the dinghy on foot most of the way across the island.  

Salt line

Not much wildlife at shallow tide, but we did see a juvenile shark that freaked out at sighting us and erratically swam away.  Charlie was very surprised as well and wanted to give chase…I had to wrestle him to keep him in the boat.

For my geology friends

We eventually made it to the east side of the island and picnicked on the berm under Australian pine trees.

The dinghy ride back was a lot smoother since we could actually float and use the engine.  The dogs were so pooped; they slept the whole way back!