Manjack Cay to Powell Cay

Day 26:  Saturday March 21, 2015

We awoke to a glassy bay.  There was not a breath of air moving.  That describes the entire day.  We started our day with pancakes and V-8 juice.

Our goal for the day was to make another short jump to another Cay as we move toward the western end of the northern Bahamas.  It doesn’t look like there is another good weather window for us to make the Crossing in the next 6 days so we are in no real hurry to get to the west jump off spot and just sit.

We fired up the engine at about 9:00 and spent the next 2 hours gliding across crystal clear smooth waters toward Powell Cay.  A good portion of the trip took us across fairly long stretches of water that were exposed to the Atlantic and we experienced swells of about 2 feet.  These are the huge waves that slowly lift the boat up and the lower it back down. 

We pulled into a fairly wide open bay that surrounded by a white sandy beach.  We motored up fairly close to the shore looking for a good place to drop our anchor.  We finally dropped it in about 7 feet of water but when I put out about 70 feet of rode, the boat swung over and drug on the very shallow water at the edge of the beach. 

The trip guide talks about trails on this cay so we decided to go looking.  We got into the dink and rowed to the shore.  Not far away from where we had anchored, a fisherman was casting from a rubber dinghy.  We asked him if he knew of the trails and he said that there was a sign down near the end of the beach.  On the way there, we noticed some junk laying back off of the beach a ways, including two soccer balls hanging from a tree branch in a net bag. I went over to check it out and noticed a Styrofoam float hanging from another tree further back in the woods and realized that there was a trail leading to it.  It turned out that we had entered a well-used trail that traversed the island.  Like other paths that we had been on, it was very narrow and unlike others, it was well marked with old shoes, bottles, floats, pieces of rope, a child overalls etc.  These were hanging from branches, stacked on the ground, or stuck on the end of twigs sticking out into the trail. 

We followed the trail for probably ½ mile until we came to an Atlantic beach.  Again, this was a truly beautiful beach that had heavy surf crashing.  We took some pictures and sat for a spell before returning to the trail and to other side of the Cay.

Back at the boat, we could see that she was dragging on the bottom in the falling tide so we pulled her forward, raised the anchor and moved further south down the cove towards the area where the fisherman had been.  We again dropped the hook and prepared lunch. 

The water was still glassy smooth and still no air was stirring.  The heat became oppressive. We were anchored in about 8 feet of water and you could see the bottom very clearly.  Looking around, I noticed that there was a rusting hull of a sunken vessel between us and the beach.  This is where the fisherman was catching fish.  We decided to get out our skin diving equipment and go have a look.  We were rewarded with a myriad of colorful fish and some coral that had moved onto the wreck.  Amongst the fish was a lionfish.  These beautiful creatures are real problem on the coral reefs.  They are vicious predators that are eating the young of other species and causing  changes in the coral ecosystems.   Their body is covered with long feathery looking spines that are reported to be poisonous.  This fish is an invasive species that arrived in the waters around southern Florida and since they have no real predators in these waters have spread throughout the Caribbean.  Later in the evening, we talked to a local fisherman who came to fish over the wreck he said that the Bahamian fish and game folk had been sponsoring tournaments and paying a bounty on all of the lionfish brought in.

We prepared our evening meal of bratwurst and mashed.  Our appetizer was kipper snacks on crackers and our beverage was Kilian’s for me and Kalik (a local Bahamian beer) for Janine. I  am not trying to sell anything, however, I have come to be able to enjoy warm beer.  The first few that we had early in the trip were a bit tough to take, however, now, I can honestly say that I enjoy them. 

Back down on the beach, we walked to the other end of the long expanse of sand looking for shells.  This beach had a lot more shells and interesting things to see than others on which we have searched.  We found a number of holes that had been freshly dug.  You could see where the crab (?) had kicked the sand out of the hole and then a multitude of tracks leading out and back in.  A crab has 10 walking legs, so when he walks, he makes a lot of foot marks in the sand.

Back at the boat we sat and watched the sunset and at late dusk, it was shower time.  We hung the solar shower from the boom, disrobed and had a nice warm shower in a cool (cold) breeze.  It wasn’t necessarily pretty but man did we feel better after the fact.