{"id":1707,"date":"2013-03-18T01:22:59","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T01:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=1707"},"modified":"2023-11-13T21:54:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T02:54:45","slug":"heading-north-and-a-perfect-day-of-sailing-destination-cat-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=1707","title":{"rendered":"Heading North and a perfect day of sailing. Destination Cat Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 14:00 on Sunday and we were a dozen miles from land in any direction and crossing the ocean between Long Island and Cat Island.\u00a0 The water was about 6,000 feet deep and a dark rich indigo. \u00a0That’s really deep. \u00a0What’s most amazing is that the bottom drops off from about 50′ to thousands in just 1\/4 mile. \u00a0It’s \u00a0a cliff, for sure. \u00a0 We were fishing using a mesh cast net<\/a> <\/span>and caught what was probably a Mahi-Mahi, great eating, but lost it. \u00a0Perhaps the most impressive is that bringing in a fish that weighs perhaps a dozen pounds while racing along at 7kts is a challenge. \u00a0In order to bring the fish in I rounded up the boat into the wind to slow the but that made us really bounce around, which Brenda didn’t appreciate. \u00a0I guess that’s enough fishing for one day. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The wind today is about perfect with the apparent wind in the 10-15kt range directly on the beam.\u00a0 We are sailing today with Ariel, an Aerodyne 47, a boat that is much larger than we are.\u00a0 However, Pandora held her own and most of the time we kept up.\u00a0 We did loose over a mile on her when we rounded up to try and boat the fish.\u00a0 However, after seeing how Brenda, who had been doing fine up until the \u201cfish episode\u201d, began to feel poorly while I tried to reel in the fish, I decided that having fish for dinner tonight\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0as important as keeping Brenda from becoming ill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We had a great week at Thompson Bay Long Island and enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones.\u00a0 As luck would have it, a group of some 25 to 30 boats decided to have a rally from George Town to Thompson Bay, something that I am told happens each winter.\u00a0 As part of the festivities there were parties on the beach and dinners at the local eatery, the Long Island Breeze.\u00a0 We participated in a number of the activities and enjoyed ourselves a great deal. \u00a0This rally was an opportunity for the folks that hang out in Georgetown for months at a time to get out of town for a few days. \u00a0 The cocktail party on the beach was great fun. \u00a0\"\"<\/a>That’s only a part of the dink “fleet” at the beach. \u00a0That’s a lot of dinks. \u00a0 If you are wondering, ours is the grey one with the 15hp outboard. \u00a0Yeah, really unique.\"\"<\/a><\/span>After two months in the Bahamas we decided that it was high time to begin a leisurely run north beginning with Cat Island.\u00a0\u00a0 As Miles and Laureen, aboard Ariel, had done this run before, we decided that we would \u201cbuddy boat\u201d with them for a while.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know how much time we will spend on Cat as we also would like to take in some of the islands in the Exumas chain that we missed on our run down to George Town to meet up with the boys.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday we took a hike out to one of the ocean beaches where we hoped to find some nice shells.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, we have tons now but we hoped to find some varieties that we had not seen yet.\u00a0 We also hoped to find some \u201csea beans\u201d, small brown nuts that are about 1-3\u201d inches around.\u00a0 These floating beans come all the way from South America, I am told, and wash up on the ocean facing beaches of the Bahamas.\u00a0 To date we have only found one but were rewarded by finding two yesterday.\u00a0 Good thing that we found the beans as the beach\u00a0didn’t\u00a0have many shells.\u00a0 It\u2019s funny how some beaches have loads of shells and others don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Here’s a sample of some that we found on Rum Cay last week. \u00a0You never know which beach will be chock full of discoveries. \u00a0 Yes, you guessed it, Brenda loves little shells.\u00a0\"\"<\/a>Unfortunately, the beach was littered with plastic trash, everything from soda bottles to discarded fishing floats and nets.\u00a0 Just about anything that will float and is not bio-degrade seemed to have ended up on the beach.\u00a0 While most of the trash was high and dry, a remarkable amount of garbage was sloshing around in the waves off of the beach including a large tangle of lines and floats, clearly a discarded or lost fishing net.\u00a0 It\u2019s unfortunate to see a beautiful beach defiled by massive amounts of trash.\u00a0 Garbage disposal on the islands is a problem and I can\u2019t imagine what can be done to solve this.\u00a0 Perhaps piling up the debris and setting fire to it is about the only option. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In spite of the trash, the beach was quite scenic with craggy outcroppings off shore looking dramatic in the sunlight against the deep blue waters.\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/span>We sat on a rock at the end of the beach and had a picnic lunch.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A friend off of another boat taught Brenda how to weave baskets from palm fronds so I was hot on the trail to harvest some materials for her to work her magic on.\u00a0 Happily, we were successful and harvested a number of compact fronds. You only pick the ones that look like a green spear and have not yet opened up to weave baskets.\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/span>Brenda\u2019s first basket looks great but to her\u00a0discerning<\/span>\u00a0eye, she feels that it\u2019s a bit rough.\u00a0 Me, I am really impressed with her first effort and am certain that she will be turning out\u00a0magnificent\u00a0pieces very soon. \u00a0It’s worth noting that this shot of Brenda weaving her first basket was taken as we sailed up the western coast of Long Island today.\u00a0\"\"<\/a>Along the way to the beach we came across some \u201cwild\u201d goats.\u00a0 The mothers and kids were quite cute. \u00a0\"\"<\/a>I also spied this little lizard on a palm frond.\u00a0 These little guys are everywhere.\"\"<\/a><\/span>We are looking forward to seeing the sights on Cat Island and are excited about being shown the ropes by Miles and Laureen.<\/p>\n

The trip today was over 60 miles. \u00a0Let me assure you that that’s a long way to sail in a day. \u00a0We did the run with only one hour of motoring in 10 hours. \u00a0Not \u00a0bad. \u00a0 Ariel beat us by half an hour.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, after a great day of sailing I was pretty pooped but not so tired that I couldn’t make a few rum punches.\u00a0 Now, that’s a perfect way to cap off a great day of sailing.<\/p>\n

How about closing with tonight’s equally perfect sunset? \u00a0Actually, that’s a similar color to a rum punch. \u00a0Accidental? I don’t think so. \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 14:00 on Sunday and we were a dozen miles from land in any direction and crossing the ocean between Long Island and Cat Island.\u00a0 The water was about 6,000 feet deep and a dark rich indigo. \u00a0That’s really deep. \u00a0What’s most amazing is that the bottom drops off from about 50′ to thousands in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1707"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13830,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions\/13830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}