Exploring the Abacos: Week 1

All of our hard work and preparation has paid off!  Our first week in the Bahamas is exactly what I had been looking forward to!

Sunset in Marsh Harbor

Before I start getting into the details, I thought it would be good to start with a bit of geography to get everyone oriented to our location. 

The first map below shows the southern tip of Florida in the upper left, Cuba in the lower left, and the Turks and Caicos in the lower right.  The rest is the Bahamas, and the circled bit are the Abacos, where we are currently located.

The Bahamas

Next, I've enlarged the map of the Abacos so that some of the larger towns are shown.  Our home base for our first week has been Marsh Harbor, which is near the center of the Abacos.

The Abacos

As I mentioned in my last entry, we had planned a day of fishing for wahoo on Sunday.  It was a gorgeous day and Steve fought and landed a large barracuda but we missed out on wahoo.  It was a worthwhile trip, though, and we learned a lot about the current in this area which will be useful for our next fishing expedition.

Monday, we decided to do a bit of exploring by dinghy and took a trip to Hopetown and Tahiti Beach on nearby Elbow Cay (~5 nm). The approximate route is shown in red below.

Dinghy Expedition Routes

Hopetown is a picturesque little village with a candy-striped lighhouse to greet its visitors. We walked around the town, visited the beach and had lunch at Capt. Jack's. 

Elbow Cay Lighthouse

Downtown Hopetown

Beach at Hopetown

Hopetown Harbour

 

After lunch, we hopped back in the dinghy and motored to Tahiti Beach, which was littered with volcanic rock and some rocks embedded with dark pink stones. Based on cursory research, I think this is coral limestone with aragonite.  Very cool 😎

View from Tahiti Beach

Lava rocks

Co

Coral Limestone 

Plant Life on Tahiti Island

Later that day, we invited a young woman whom we had met a few days earlier to join us for dinner.  Audrey and her cat, Davy Jones, came over at sunset and we enjoyed a few hours getting to know her. She's a fellow-Floridian who is a band director-turned-sea Captain. 

Davy Jones Checking Out Jake's Digs

The next day we took a break to do a few things around the boat and just relax a bit. 

Wednesday, we resumed our exploration - this time taking the route indicated by the black circle in the third map above.  The objective of this reconnaissance was to locate coral heads and hopefully, lobster habitats!

Once again, we had spectacular weather with both air and water temperatures in the low 80's. Perfect for a bit of snorkeling action... We found one really large coral head, just off of Cistern Cay, with lots of fish but unfortunately no lobster. 

Perfect Conditions for a 20 mile Dinghy Ride

In terms of other wildlife sightings, we saw a huge sea turtle and two very large manta rays.  If you look closely in the photo below, you can see the manta rays; they're the two darkish blobs. I know...this photo looks like every photo of the Loch Ness monster ever taken. hahaha  I need to work on getting my phone out faster and having the screen brightness set appropriately for the afternoon sun. 

We've also seen some small rays right along the shore in Marsh Harbor. We beach the dinghy there so that we can take Jake for his walks.  One morning, I jumped out of the dinghy and then out of my skin when a ray came darting out from beneath my feet. 

A Pair of Manta Rays (I swear!)

The next couple of days, we did a few typical chores....laundry, post office run, etc. and made plans for next week's adventure. So ends our first week! Tomorrow we're going to sail to Green Turtle Cay where we plan to spend a week exploring in that area. Until next time!