Rudder Cay

Blossom at anchor at Rudder Cay. 

I swear, these colors are real and not photo shopped!

View from our deck

We’ve just spent 4 days anchored off Rudder Cay, about 9 miles north of our last anchorage. It’s extremely pretty here and we spent a few days just exploring in the dinghy with our snorkel gear.  The big attraction here is the piano and mermaid that David Copperfield placed in the water off of Rudder Cay. So we were sure to get the obligatory photos!  The current rips through here so everyone flocks to snorkel it at high/low slack. I didn’t get the picture of the 4+ foot barracuda that floated nearby watching all the action. I’ll bet he comes by at slack regularly to check out all the action.

Mermaid at the piano

Martin playing the piano with the mermaid listening in

Me free falling – can’t get any lower because of my ears!

Cays to the south (the Darby’s)

Eagle rays

Sting rays

Snorkeling

Cruising around

Small cays to the north

Mushi Cay, gorgeous resort - David Copperfield owns it. You can rent it for mucho $$ if you'd like :)

We had an especially beautiful sunset one evening and I snapped a few pictures. 

Ithaki at sunset

We visited the boat in the photo to see if they’d like any of the photos and that’s how we met Elizabeth & Morgan. They’re a fun, friendly young couple who just moved aboard their boat, Ithaki. We invited them over for cocktails one evening and had a fantastic time.  I hope that we’ll cross paths with them again!  It was auspicious that they happened to be aboard that evening when we found that our bilge pump had gone off 36 times in the last 24 hours. Morgan, an experienced merchant marine, was able to help Martin sleuth the problem. Someone, ahem, like me, hadn’t turned the faucet off on the swim step hose. The make shift nozzle (we broke it a while back), began to leak and the fresh water dripped into the bilge. I took one for the team – I did taste the water in the bilge to determine that it was fresh (and slightly oily, water :/  yuck.)

A couple of boats that we’d met while exploring the cave at Norman’s Pond came into the anchorage while we were there. We stopped by to say hi to everyone. It’s fun to see the same folks as you skip up the cays.  One afternoon we were looking for a shark in the bay by our boat and our dinghy stalled out (no, we not run out of gas J It was quickly remedied when we got back to Blossom).  The folks from a nearby boat, Gabriel 1, were kind enough to tow us back to Blossom. We were quite grateful as we weren’t making much progress rowing against the incoming current!  We asked them over for cocktails as a thank you and we had a lovely evening with Lyle, Gary & Carol. They’ve travelled here from South Africa via the Caribbean and had the most amazing stories to tell! We saw them a couple days later when we went up to visit Little Farmers Cay. We enjoyed a beer, great company, and got a tour of their very spacious cat. We’re hoping we’ll meet up with them again as we head north.

Gabriel 1 

Sean & Louise left Rudder Cay a few days ahead of us and anchored in a pretty little bay up at Big Farmers Cay.  So one afternoon we took the dinghy up to Little Farmer Cay, about 6 miles away.

Vector at anchor

We met them and had lunch at the Farmers Cay Yacht Club. The owner, Roosevelt, was eager for me to post a pic to their new Facebook page. I got a good photo but as a friend noted, I forgot to include the kalik beer (barely visible center top of photo :)!

Bahamian Lunch

View from lunch at Farmers Cay Yacht Club

Little Farmers is very small settlement. Martin and I walked around for a bit, spoke with a local artist about his wood carvings and headed home.

On Thursday, we had our first spring? summer? storm.  Blossom got a good wash and we anxiously waited for the thunder & lightening to pass. It was nice to have a “rain day”. Martin attended to some maintenance issues and I worked on the blog. We also decided to head up to Black Point on Friday where we’ll meet up with Sean & Louise who went ahead on Wednesday. We had been planning on getting there on Friday but I’d like to start going north.  There are a few bays along the west side of Great Guana Cay that look like they’d be fun to explore and hopefully calm/current-free enough to SUP in. 

There may also be a blowy front coming next week from the west. Since there aren’t many places to take cover from west/southwest winds, everyone will be cramming into the nooks and crannies. So I’d like to see Great Guana now and be positioned a bit north and on the bank in case we need to duck in for a day or two.  We’re also in need of some fresh food and there’s a grocery store in Black Point.

The weather is definitely changing. In addition to our first thunder storm, the winds are calming down and it’s getting warmer. It was so calm the other night that I looked down and saw this:

We were just sitting on top of our anchor in what looks like really shallow water. It’s actually about 11 feet deep.

I know I post a lot of sunset pictures, but I can’t help myself. So here are a few more J

Petal and her new friend enjoying a pink sunset

Boat Business: 

• Martin finished some routine maintenance things like cleaning strainers and filters. 
• He also cleaned the bilge since I was kind enough to fill it with clean water for him.  

Next post though...getting parts shipped to the Exumas :/  How's that for a cliff hanger?!