Today was the calmest day we have had at the Cays and what we have been waiting for, so we had to make the most of it. We went out to the dinghy passage which is a narrow gap through the reef to the open sea. The snorkelling was great, it was great visibility and no current. Loads of fish and a big drop off into the passage. There was some lovely coral, Rowan was in his element.
We discovered that Chris Doyle who writes the definitive sailing guide to the Caribbean was anchored next to us in his catamaran. Rowan found a picture on his Facebook page that he had taken with a drone, you can see PolePole, second from left, it gives a very clear picture of the reef.
A copy of Chris Doyle’s drone pic of the Cays
We had been told about the sharks that had been seen, and that they usually are around in the late afternoon. Off we went and had a little explore, it was not long before we suddenly saw this shark coming straight for us, I didn’t have time to get nervous and we were too far from Jeldi Jeldi for me to swim to, so I just tucked in behind Rowan who managed to film the whole thing. He was about 6 foot long and was either a Nurse shark or Black tipped, we are not too sure. He did an enormous circle around us and then disappeared. I found that most probably more unnerving, knowing he was about, just we couldn’t see him!
As we returned to the boat we stopped by the Wandering Albatross (South African boat) and invited them for a drink. These guests turned up! A fascinating couple, she is Scottish and met Gary (the South African) on a visit to South Africa. They arrived in the Caribbean 30 years ago and have been chartering boats ever since with a few breaks in between. He has his captain’s licence and is obviously very qualified, they basically have been in charge of super yachts for extremely wealthy clients and have sailed endlessly around the world getting boats to the right place for the owners. They had some amazing stories, she is a scientist, they were both very friendly and understated, I can imagine they were in high demand, as they were just very easy company. An extremely stressful job though, they made us laugh as they said the very hardest part of the job was hiring and being in charge of the crew. We told them we had a taste of the crew community in Antigua. What was an incredible coincidence was we asked them what their plans were and they said they were returning to the Azores where they have a house, and is home for them now. We told them about the people who we had met on El Gaucho and how they are building a house there too, it turned out they knew each other because El Gaucho is using their same architect! Small world.
Another sky scene especially for June Garrard!
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