The Exumas are a chain of more than 365 islands and cays that span about 135 miles, running roughly north-south. Our first stop was Highbourne Cay. Highbourne Cay is an entirely private island with a high-end resort that includes a marina, a small grocery store and a restaurant. Although the island is completely private, we were able to anchor off the island and enjoy the beautiful waters, sunsets and sunrises.
Since we were so close to the island, we decided to take advantage of some of its amenities. We enjoyed lunch at the nice restaurant, did some grocery shopping at the store, and filled Tilia’s fuel tanks. This was the first time Anne was back in the dinghy again, and she did great! Her recovery is proceeding so well.
After a couple days, we decided to raise anchor and move to another cay. Anne was able to take her usual place on the foredeck, directing the operation and managing the anchor, bridle, and windlass. Once the anchor was put away, we made a short jump to Normans Cay.
Normans Cay was briefly famous in the late 1970s and early 80s for being a stopover for the Medellin cartel moving cocaine to the US, but that fame is long gone. Now, it’s very quiet, with a small marina and a few private homes. There wasn’t much for us to see ashore there, so we spent a couple days relaxing on the boat. Jim took the opportunity to use our battery-operated scuba system that we bought to help us clean the hull. There is so much bioactivity in the ocean, especially when we compare it to our years on Lake Superior. This bioactivity means within weeks, we get enough growth on our hull to slow us down. Rather than paying a diver to scrape the hull, in this crystal clear water, we can do our own cleaning. Anne can’t go in the water until the last couple deepest dog bites are closed up, but she could supervise.
One blemish on the anchorage is that we could smell the burning trash on Normans Cay. The Exumas are remote, and rather than pay to haul off trash, much is burned on site. It will be good to move along, away from that smell! We minimize our trash by limiting the use of paper products, reusing plastic containers, avoiding plastic bags, and holding biodegradable food waste until we are deep enough that we can drop it overboard. There is often no place to drop off our trash in these remote cays.