Shroud Cay

Thursday morning we left Palm Cay Marina at high tide and headed south to Shroud Cay. It was a picture perfect day, a welcomed change from the rainy, blowy weather we’d been having.  We haven’t been running the boat from the fly bridge much so we were happy to have the opportunity to give it a go.

Enjoying running the boat from the fly bridge

Mom, enjoying the view

We arrived at Shroud around 3pm and anchored just next to the mooring field. We quickly went about setting up the boat. We put our sun shades on the pilot house windows, splashed Petal, washed down the cockpit and uncovered the furniture and hung the shades up there. Martin and I have gone through the routine that we can get everything set up pretty quickly. It was warm and sunny with a slight breeze – perfection!

View from the anchorage

Enjoying our lanai

It was hot so we broke out our snorkeling gear and took a swim around Blossom. The water was crystal clear and it looked like it was just a few feet deep, not 10!  Mom and I spent the late afternoon sewing on the fly bridge. Then we had a great barbeque dinner. We pretty much collapsed into bed that night.

Heading out to explore, Blossom is in the background

Our first full day a Shroud we went exploring. We packed/wore swim suits and head up north to Norman’s Cay. We had anchored out there in ’09 and visited McDuff’s – a very pretty restaurant known for its hamburger. There are 12 people who live on the island and there’s an airport there. The cay has an airstrip which is infamous for being used by drug runners in years past.  We anchored the dinghy off the beach and had a great lunch there. I wish I’d taken a picture of the seating area. It was like eating in an outdoor living room.

Anchored off of Norman’s

Grumpy Martin

Heading to McDuff’s

After lunch we went around to check out the sunken airplane.

 We decided not to snorkel it but I tried to capture it in a photo. (It’s right at a cut and I was having a particularly shark-anxious day.) Instead, we scoped out a few areas on the way back to Shroud, passing Wax Cay and stopped to snorkel around some big rocks.  We found a few really pretty snorkel sites with quite a variety of fish.

Mom snorkeling

Snorkel Break

Queen conch – isn’t she beautiful? (We were in the Exuma Park at the time, not that I would have killed her for her shell, but it is also a no-take zone)

Sargent Major hangout

One area had a lot of worms. I’ve never seen the yellow ones before. I'm not very familiar with the worms but I tried to identify them from my Reef Creature book.

Yellow Feather Duster Worm

Variegated Feather Duster

Shell and two feather duster worms

Thorny Sea Star

Swimming from snorkel site to snorkel site, could it be any more beautiful?

Cool snorkel picture of my Mom

We got home in the late afternoon and we were absolutely exhausted. It was a fabulous day on the water but sun, salt and sea breeze combined resulted in a very early evening and a very heavy sleep for us all!

The next day we headed out to explore the northern most “river” that cuts straight across to the sound. We’d done this in ’09 also and remembered that you had a beautiful view from the top of the hill on the other side.

Entering the river

This is a protected area and there’s a 3 knot speed limit. We were disappointed when huge dinghy and jet ski from a mega yacht (here’s looking at you, Mia Elisa) came flying through on plane. Martin chastised them and told them to slow down. We got lots of laughs and our picture taken. Gotta love it when people show so much respect for nature and a national park. Not.

Exiting on the other side

Climbing up the hill

Top of the hill – Camp Driftwood

View to the east, Blossom is a white speck in the distance

View west over the sound

Tropic Bird. This is a terrible pic but they’re gorgeous birds with long tail feathers

Hiking back down

Lizard

The sand felt like talcum powder

On the way back we anchored in the river and had a picnic lunch

We stopped at several coral patches on the way home and did a bit of snorkeling again. I love the shallow bommies, they’re filled with tons of juvie reef fish.  We looked hard for hiding lion fish but didn’t see any. (Not that we’d be allowed to spear them – no fishing in the park, not even lion fish.)

I think it's a very pale honeycomb cow fish

Intermediate French Angelfish

Blue chromie

Butterfly fish

Mom was going to go for a quick swim around Blossom when we got back but we had his guy hanging out under Blossom.

He was about 3 feet long, a big enough barracuda that I didn’t want to jump in! Then we saw 5 remora hanging out as well and figured the nurse shark that had visited us the day before must be nearby. So we nixed the swim. Too much wildlife, we headed in for happy hour J

We had another visitor at dinner time. This guy was bold!

We want to show Mom as much as we can, but not feel too rushed. I was hoping to spend 3 nights in 4 locations but because of the tides, we’ll need an extra day to return to the marina (we need to enter at high tide which is at 10am). So we’ll need to have a shorter visit at one location.

Having had a great 3 nights at Shroud, we got up this morning and left right away for Little Bay, Great Guana.  We’ll spend 2 or 3 nights there and then will start returning north, hopping up to Big Majors after that. After three perfect weather days, the wind is going to pick up a little bit and it’s perfect timing as Little Bay and Big Majors are well protected from E/SE winds.  Now we’ll get to show Mom a small settlement and return to a couple of beautiful snorkeling spots. It’ll also be nice to be connected again, we didn’t have any internet at Shroud and I need to feed my weather addiction!

Boat Business: Too busy playing to attend to maintenance and all systems are working well!