Saturday, January 21, 2017

January 20, 2017 Schooner Islands off SW Eleuthera

First of all, I want to recognize Dave's brother, Dean.  He is a police officer in Minneapolis.  Today he is in Washington, DC as extra police force during the inauguration.  We are proud of the work he does in Minneapolis and now serving our country. 

I woke up early today, so I decided to listen to Chris Parker’s weather forecast for the Bahamas at 6:30am.   We are expecting really strong winds and need to decide where to anchor for the best protection.  

I could see some crazy colors on the water out the window.  I just had to go out and take pictures.  The water was unusually calm this morning, which made great reflections on the water.  And you could see the ocean floor around our boat.  It is only about about 8 feet deep.  It looked like a swimming pool.

 
 

We took off around noon to go exploring in the dinghy.  We hoped to find a nice coral reef to swim and spearfish.  But we only saw rocks, grass, and sandy bottoms.  But we had a great day exploring tiny islands.  We have sailed around the south west tip of Eleuthera and noticed these little spits of sand called Schooner Islands.  They ended up being about 10 miles from where we anchored, but we had plenty of fuel and a nice calm day to skip across the water. 

We stopped at a sand bar with a monument on it, the sign was missing.  The water was unbelievable.  What was strange was that one side was a “conch graveyard”.  There were hundreds of conch shells discarded there.  Must have been someone commercially harvesting them.  Strange. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We beached at a little island for lunch.  We walked around the beach as far as we could without shoes.  Then Dave did a little exploring in the trees, barefoot.  He found the foundation of a house and an old cistern that was holding water. 

 
 
 

 
I thought the tracks on the beach were unusual.  And I found a bush with some kind of fruit. 
It was about 2:30 when we headed back across the open water to our boat, about 45 minute ride. 

 


 
We did find the blue hole near our boat.  It had a rock and coral wall that dropped down about 10 feet deeper than the surrounding floor.  We skipped swimming in it. 

We really had a fun day enjoying the beautiful water and islands. 
This is a 360 degree video while I was standing in water about 8 inches deep.  Just Beautiful!!



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