Staniel Cay

 Hi all!

We were incommunicado for a few days with no signal. Had a lovely time but the crew was lamenting the lack of fresh food so we came down here today and partook of burgers and salad at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club.

There has been some really good sailing and snorkeling along the way and Mary has suggested we go back north to sample some more of the park.

We did have a bit of an adventure on Warderick Wells yesterday. After taking a park mooring at Emerald Rocks we wanted to go to park headquarters where we knew we might be able to score a cold drink. It was probably a half mile away by dinghy but I suggested we walk, remembering the scenic trails from previous years. This hike, a result of my bad choice, involved a good hour and a half of slogging through jagged rocks, poison wood, thick underbrush, leering hutias ( an endemic small mammal) , and a case of heatstroke for Mary, who essentially collapsed at one point. Cryptic signage led us over to the other side of the island where we fortunately ran into a couple of Quebecois friends. They helped us back in the right direction and gave Malachi a ride back to our dinghy, which he then rowed to the park office. Rowing back to White Seal was a cinch, maybe 15 minutes.

Another fantastic rowing adventure took.place at Shroud Cay. We managed to get the big boat very close to the entrance of Sanctuary Creek Creek and anchored for the night. In the morning we rowed through the mangrove lined creek to the ocean outlet. It's a stunning place. We shared it with a megayachts family whose hired crew had set up cabanas and were blasting music and serving drinks. Not to us! The megayachts owner was impressed with our little dinghy and my guess is that he may have never seen one in use.

Speaking of the megayachts crowd, Mary had met a captain of one in the bar at Highborne Cay and she peppered him with questions. It turned out he had just finished a stint of 3 weeks with the owner aboard. On one day it developed that a member of the owners family had a need for some Mint Oreo cookies. Regular Oreos were aboard, but would not suffice. So the captain fired up the dinghy and went from Highborne into Nassau, a round trip of 70 miles, to acquire some Mint Oreos. With a thousand horsepower at his disposal he was back in a bit over two hours. We can't do that with our dinghy!

Cheers, Charlie