It’s hard to believe we’ve been in the Staniel Cay area for nine days. Time does fly when you don’t realize what day it is. We’ve done a lot of things here that we missed doing when we were in Staniel Cay before, but it’s time to move a little farther north. We don’t really want to get into the Abacos until May, when it’s more likely to be warm. For some reason, the Abacos are cooler than the Exumas, while both areas are in the Bahamas and not that far apart. We also aren’t quite ready to cross over to Eleuthera, as we probably won’t spend a lot of time there either and from there we would go to the Abacos.
In retrospect, we probably should have stayed only a week or two in Georgetown and then headed to Long Island, Cat Cay, and Eleuthera. Or, we should have gone a little more slowly coming south. But that’s not to say we haven’t enjoyed everything we’ve done. We would like to get back into Exuma Park as the snorkeling is the best there since it’s a no take area and there are plenty of fish to see. Also, the coral is in better condition than some other places we’ve snorkeled. The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park begins a short distance north of where we are now. It runs from Wax Cay Cut to Conch Cut, a total of 22 miles. It is made up of 15 major cays and many smaller ones. There are no commercial developments in the park area.
We’ve had good Internet service here, although not free and not cheap. We’ve been paying $25 for three days, but if we had known we were going to be here this long we could have gotten a week-long prepaid ticket for $55. When we leave here, we aren’t sure if we’ll have good Internet availability. Therefore, it might be a few days or more before we will upload to this site.
Above is a photo of our view of Big Majors for the last week or so as we have been anchored between Big Majors Spot and Little Majors Spot. On one part of Big Majors Spot, there are wild pigs. They only seem to go to one of several beaches, although there would be no known reason for them not to visit parts of the whole island as there are no fences keeping them in one place and it’s one mile long. In the photo above, which is part of Big Majors, the animal is a goat. The goats seem to stick to this side of the island and don’t interact with the pigs. We have heard that some residents of Staniel Cay left the pigs on the island, but haven’t heard any stories about the goats. There are no people living on Big Majors.
Last night was the big “James Bond” party at Staniel Cay. We decided to skip it as we weren’t interested in gambling, drinking, or eating dinner there. Also, it started at 8:30 and lasted until after midnight. We didn’t want to be out in the dinghy in the dark.
It is Spring Break right now at many schools and universities and we have noticed that Staniel Cay has more visitors onshore than ones arriving by boat. There are quite a few rentals on the Cay, and they are presently filled with families and college/high school students. A few larger yachts are at the marina and they seem to have families on them also.
All was not fun and games here, as Mark spent the last three days fixing major electrical problems on the boat. He was successful in finding and resolving all of the problems, so we are now in fine shape. Often when something happens, he is in the dark as to how to fix it. He goes through a series of fixes that might work and sometimes we ask for help online from an Lagoon 420 owners forum. Invariably, within a very short period of time, we hear back from a few owners with possible answers to fixing the problem. It’s one thing to fix something on a boat when you know what the cause is and the way to fix it. It’s quite something else to not know what caused it and sometimes not know WHERE the problem might even be. Slowly but surely, Mark is becoming proficient at solving these problems. As we have heard, everything on a boat is broken.....you just don’t know it yet.