Monday, May 10, 2010 – Highbourne Cay, northern Exumas

We spent some time this morning trying to locate a salt water washdown pump in the inventory of spare parts aboard Adventure but didn’t have any luck finding one. Mark and Jim walked up to the marine store after it opened to see if they could pick up a pump there, but could only come up with a scaled down version. Fortunately, this is not a critical item for boat operations. In the meantime, Gale, Diane and Maureen walked across the street to the grocery store to load up on ice.

At 11 am we left the dock bound for Allan’s Cay, the northernmost island in the Exumas island chain. It was another lovely day and we made the 33-mile passage in 4.5 hours. As we approached the islands, we could see about 10 sailboats in the Allan’s Cay anchorage so we opted to anchor near the adjacent island, Highbourne Cay, where we found three other larger yachts already moored.







When we were safely settled in, we splashed the small dinghy and took the dogs to shore for a run on Highbourne. The dogs were returned to the big boat and Gale, Maureen, Mark and Diane set out for some snorkeling at Allan Cay while Jim stayed with Adventure and dove the boat for a routine inspection of the keel.

Allan’s Cay is a Bahamas National Trust Preserve and is known for the large number of iguanas on the island. The creatures are used to visitors bringing handouts, but are not tame and will bite. We had brought some bread to feed the lizards which teased several of them out of the tall grass and onto the beach. They were joined by a few shorebirds looking for an easy meal. After taking a few photos of the iguanas, we put on our snorkel gear and paddled around the protected bay. We saw the usual conch, some coral, small colorful fish and a barracuda. Another visitor pointed us in the direction of where he’d seen a sleeping shark, but we did not come upon it when we swam over in that vicinity which, as far as Maureen was concerned, was not a bad thing!

Back aboard Adventure, we enjoyed another fantastic sunset as we prepared our evening meal. It was “just another day in Paradise!”