Rum Cay

The winds torments Rowan because they never do quite what’s predicted, so a good sail to Rum Cay, was ok for part of the way. The highlight being the sudden clicking on the trawling rod alerting us to a fish on the line. Such excitement getting buckets, the tequila and the lethal looking gaff out. It was another MahiMahi on the line which the men had to flex their muscles fighting it in, to our amazement there was another one swimming alongside. Phoebs was convinced it was the wife urging her man to fight to the death and it worked, just as it was getting close it managed to get off the hook. We were very sad to have lost our delicious sashimi dinner. We then discovered that we had a fish on the other line on the bungee, the fish must have been exhausted as Sam wound it onto the boat, a lot of anxiety as we realised it was a barracuda, which has vicious teeth. We doused it with tequila to get the hook out with the long nosed pliers, not letting those teeth anywhere close to us. We let it go and hope it recovered from it’s drunken haze.

Rowan had found us a sheltered bay suitable for anchoring but it was a nerve wracking motor through the reef with lots of scary coral heads, passing by a ship wreck just for added impact.

We were all alone there, clearly not a popular spot. It was incredibly hot. Rowan got his drone out which he hasn’t operated in a couple of years, it nearly had a sea dive but with alarm bells shrieking it was low on battery, he finally managed to crash land it on the back steps which was quite an effort. Once he got a new battery on he managed to get some good footage.

Phoebs Rowan and I went out to the reef for a snorkel but I lost my nerve at the last minute. It was not as good as yesterdays, so I did not mind missing it. The good news was that Rowan got a fish with his Bahamas sling…. great excitement although he thought it looked so much bigger under water. We tried it as sashimi and it was a bit chewy, so unlike our delicious mahimahi. Sam took half and cooked it in coconut oil and that was really scrummy. We kept the head, and Sam put it on the hook and dangled it over the edge, we soon had two barracudas fighting over it, but they were clever enough to never get hooked. What was amazing was to see the teeth marks on the metal around the hook.

Before bed the big decision had to be made – were we going to go around the corner to wait out the storm or go back to Long Island where we know there are flights for Phoeb’s and Sam’s return. It’s meant to be a big storm and last a good few days. Finally we decided to get up early and go back to Long island – slightly reluctantly for R as we have to come back this way to head south.