Conception Island (& Long Island)
7th February 2011 - 13th February 2011
This beautiful uninhabited island definitely ranks among the best we have seen on our trip so far. We tried to sail past it three times on our way to Rum Cay, but currents, lack of wind and fate conspired to make sure we didn’t miss out. What a beautiful place, with waters bluer than the sky, so clear we could see shells lying on the sandy bottom 15 meters below. There is a magnificent reef to the north, more than 20 km long, that hosts a myriad of fish and even a couple of sunken pirate ships (we didn’t find them). It was great for spearfishing, although sharks scared us out of the water on three or four occasions. One shark seemed to like our boat and kept on circling below. It stole our baited hooks a couple of times as we were fishing, because our lines were no match for its razor sharp teeth.
The interior of the island is a nature sanctuary and protected natural reserve. At high tide most of it is flooded, resulting in an enormous mangrove-swamp with a couple of tidal streams deep enough to dinghy through when the tide is high. We saw many turtles and hundreds of fish hiding between the mangrove roots.
As we are advancing South, we are getting deeper and deeper into the Trade-wind belt. This is an area (almost the entire Caribbean) in which the winds almost always blow from the East. As we are heading East, on a sailboat this kind of limits our possibilities. Waiting for the right weather window to sail onwards, we took the opportunity to make some very necessary repairs on engine, outboard and Jos even built in our new refrigerator. No more vegetables rotting away after 2 days, and hooray for cold beers!
This beautiful uninhabited island definitely ranks among the best we have seen on our trip so far. We tried to sail past it three times on our way to Rum Cay, but currents, lack of wind and fate conspired to make sure we didn’t miss out. What a beautiful place, with waters bluer than the sky, so clear we could see shells lying on the sandy bottom 15 meters below. There is a magnificent reef to the north, more than 20 km long, that hosts a myriad of fish and even a couple of sunken pirate ships (we didn’t find them). It was great for spearfishing, although sharks scared us out of the water on three or four occasions. One shark seemed to like our boat and kept on circling below. It stole our baited hooks a couple of times as we were fishing, because our lines were no match for its razor sharp teeth.
The interior of the island is a nature sanctuary and protected natural reserve. At high tide most of it is flooded, resulting in an enormous mangrove-swamp with a couple of tidal streams deep enough to dinghy through when the tide is high. We saw many turtles and hundreds of fish hiding between the mangrove roots.
As we are advancing South, we are getting deeper and deeper into the Trade-wind belt. This is an area (almost the entire Caribbean) in which the winds almost always blow from the East. As we are heading East, on a sailboat this kind of limits our possibilities. Waiting for the right weather window to sail onwards, we took the opportunity to make some very necessary repairs on engine, outboard and Jos even built in our new refrigerator. No more vegetables rotting away after 2 days, and hooray for cold beers!
Mayaguana
14th February 2011 - 21st February 2011
From island paradise Conception, we made a straight run for Mayaguana, the last of the Bahama islands more than 160 nautical miles away. We could “ride a front east”, which means that the wind was going to turn clockwise all the way from east to south to west to north, all of which time we would have it helping our advance. The downside was that it was also going to be a lot of wind, and it was. It was a hard trip, leaving everything on deck soaked by the waves that engulfed us, and the interior of the boat a mess of fallen down objects, spilt food and us trying to get some sleep in the middle of it all. The upside was that we made a lot of progression and that we caught our first big fish. We thought it to be a Wahoo at first and killed it for food, but when our enthousiasm had subsided we found out it was a barracuda. They are dangerous to eat when large, and we had to throw it overboard. Sorry mother nature!
Mayaguana is probably as remote and underdeveloped an island as you can find in the Bahamas. It’s one of the larger islands (40 km long), but only houses 216 inhabitants, none of which really seem to have anything to do. Although we didn’t really want to, we were forced to stay by the hard winds in the days to come. A great chance to practice kitesurfing in the shallow bay and do some more much-needed upgrades to the boat.
From island paradise Conception, we made a straight run for Mayaguana, the last of the Bahama islands more than 160 nautical miles away. We could “ride a front east”, which means that the wind was going to turn clockwise all the way from east to south to west to north, all of which time we would have it helping our advance. The downside was that it was also going to be a lot of wind, and it was. It was a hard trip, leaving everything on deck soaked by the waves that engulfed us, and the interior of the boat a mess of fallen down objects, spilt food and us trying to get some sleep in the middle of it all. The upside was that we made a lot of progression and that we caught our first big fish. We thought it to be a Wahoo at first and killed it for food, but when our enthousiasm had subsided we found out it was a barracuda. They are dangerous to eat when large, and we had to throw it overboard. Sorry mother nature!
Mayaguana is probably as remote and underdeveloped an island as you can find in the Bahamas. It’s one of the larger islands (40 km long), but only houses 216 inhabitants, none of which really seem to have anything to do. Although we didn’t really want to, we were forced to stay by the hard winds in the days to come. A great chance to practice kitesurfing in the shallow bay and do some more much-needed upgrades to the boat.