May 22nd to 23rd Boysie cut to Big Majors

May 22^nd It was a beautiful sight to wake up to the sun rising behind L’Adagio. We departed at 8am for the 40 mile run to Staniel Cay. Southern Star went wide to trawl lures. With no luck except one Barracuda which went straight back.

 It was a very pleasant passage and Starlet led the fleet and L’Adagio followed behind us as Laust was maybe going to wait for the tide to rise. The whole area we are now cruising in has very many shallow cuts and shoal areas and sand banks. It is all eyes on watch.

We followed Starlet some distance behind and I kept myself very busy as we went through the Dotham cut which had 3 knots of current against us, which made a big difference to the way the boat handled. It was lumpy with an outgoing tide, there was a lot of water moving through the narrow cut between the two islands. We made it through OK and then continued to follow Starlets path around the shallows until we anchored at Big Majors, just around the corner from Staniel Cay.

It was a pleasure to see 2 other Nordhavns, Baharan a 62’ and Shear Madness, a 72’. So there are now 5 Nordhavns in the same anchorage.

We had a swim as soon as we got anchored and there were 3 biggish sand sharks swimming around the boat. Thankfully they are harmless.

Kathy and Bradley from Shear Madness came over and introduced themselves, we have a mutual friend in Auckland New Zealand, Neil Spencer who was a huge help to us when we first brought Southern Star and didn’t know anyone in Auckland.

Kathy and Bradley suggested we all go for a snorkel around the corner to see the “James Bond 007” grotto where one of his movies was filmed. We quickly got organised as the tide was rising and you have to go when the tide is low.

Wow! It was an incredible experience. We had to swim under a cave ledge and you came out in a enclosed cave with a hole in the roof. There was many different tropical fish, and pretty corals. Mark actually cut his head on the rocks – it was quite low to get under to get in the cave. Tide wise, we would not want to have left it much longer.

We headed back to the boats for a quick shower and then everyone was invited to Shear Madness for sundowners. There were 13 of us so it was very busy but it was lovely to meet everyone and of course boats, in particular Nordhavns, was the main topic of conversation. Kathy gave a few of us “the tour” so we were able to admire the sheer beauty of “Shear Madness”! She is truly a beautiful boat with 4 staterooms and ensuites and loads of lovely features including a butchers block in the galley.

Back to Southern Star where Kristie and Brad had cooked a beautiful fried rice, grilled Pork Loin chops with a beautiful candle lit table! We are getting so spoilt!

 

May 23^rdWe did a few chores, had breakfast and went to see the highlight of Staniel Cay – the swimming pigs! We had a big bag of food scraps we had been saving for a couple of days and there was only us and Mark and Jennifer over at the beach. As soon as we approached the beach the pigs started wandering out from the shade of the bushes. There were big ones, baby piglets, spotted ones and pink and brown ones!

They were not shy and we had been warned by Kathy and Bradley that someone had just been bitten when he tried to make the pig sit to get the food, the pig just up and bit the guy! There was one male who was very pushy and coming right up to the duck and opening his mouth wide for the food.

We stayed in the duck but Kristie wanted to get out so she got out and walked a wee way along the beach and they started following her, she soon changed her mind and jumped back in!

We headed back to the boat and did a few more chores then headed into Staniel, we have been out of internet for a couple of days and it was high on our priority list to get data.

As we headed across in the duck Robbie spotted a Nordhavn 57 on its way into the anchorage. We headed over to them, and waved and said hi. Its called Aquaholic what a great name for a boat! We invited them to join us for lunch.

We found the BTC shop to get data and it was taking a while ( We are missing our Roaming Expert service) so we left Robbie sorting that and went for a walk around Staniel. Its very quaint with small timber chalets painted very bright colours overlooking the beautiful water. There were 2 small shops there with not too bad supplies. We decided to leave it until after lunch. We were able to order some fresh bread from a local house, she told us to come back in a couple of hours.

 We walked past the church down to the dock where the supply boat comes in once a week. It was littered with Conch shells. We found out that only locals can collect Conch! Oh oh. There was a guy sitting in his fishing boat cleaning fish and the sharks were swimming around the back of his boat.

It was lunchtime and Robbie met us back at the Yacht club, he had been successful in diving. The Kent, Lisa and their 2 daughters Caitlyn and Daina arrived but they also had 5 guests so it was too many so they sat elsewhere but we had a quick chat and swapped contact details and agreed to catch up some other time.

We had a beautiful lunch which was very reasonable with chicken wings and grouper fingers for starters and Mahi Mahi grilled, Kristie had a club sandwich which looked amazing.

 We left the yacht club to go and do the shopping but two fishermen were cleaning their fish right at the entrance on the dock, and there were about 60 sharks milling around for the scraps, and one sting ray and one turtle!

We picked up our hot bread and I got a couple of cucumbers and some limes and we all headed back to the boat. We had a quiet afternoon everyone was getting their internet fix, I loaded the two blogs and photos that I had ready to go but it took me hours as the internet was so slow. We then played 500, Brad and Kristie are really getting the hang of it now and its very enjoyable.

We declined to go to shore with all the others as we were all pretty tired and we have a 6am wake up in the morning to head up to ????? Brad cooked his infamous chicken wraps with garlic sauce, for dinner which were absolutely beautiful and very filling.