Day 245, Saturday, February 22
Today we move from Calabash bay, Long island to Conception Island. It is a fabulous sail. Our heading is about 50 degrees and we are
able to sail a straight line to get there.
We have a reef in the main as the winds are gusting up to 20 knots and
it is a close haul (wind coming across the port bow with sail pulled in tight)
sail most of the time. This point of
sail causes the boat to heel/lean quite a bit so we spill some of the wind from
the main so it is a more comfortable ride.
We keep a good speed the whole way.
About midway through the sail the fishing rod starts to scream and we
are thrilled to have a fish on the line.
Unfortunately we spend too much time getting to the rod and the line
runs to the end and the knot comes undone and no more fish, lure, or line! We feel like idiots. A real rookie mistake. Darn! Oh well, back to sailing.
When we arrive we are the only boat in the
anchorage/bay. The anchorage is gorgeous, clear blue water with a white sand beach in the background. Makes us wonder if
perhaps it was not an appropriate time to be anchored here i.e. because of
weather and safety. We were no longer
anchored for an hour when we did see another sail on the horizon so we had
about an hour and a half to have the anchorage all to ourselves. What to do. ...
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| Julie talking to our 1st neighbour |
By the time the new neighbour is anchored, there are another
5 boats on the horizon. We end up being
8 boats anchored overnight. We all keep
to ourselves and we don’t know any of the other boats. The anchorage is beautiful. We head over for a hike across to the north side of the island. Winds are typically
from the east so we mostly hide on the west coasts for anchorages. The north east sides are usually quite wild as the
waves have been crashing the coastline for ages.
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| Julie signing the hanging book |
On the way we find a plastic bag hanging from a tree with a
booklet in it. We head over to read it, Dawson getting a few sand spurs, picky burrs, in his feet on the way, it was almost like a trap, with you being bare foot and focused on the bag and then to spread some sand spurs below the bag. Inside there is a brief story about a similar
book in the Netherlands that was left 72 years ago for all those who find it to
sign it and leave a note behind. The
persons who started this book had been to Conception island in 1972 and had
just returned this February. It had only
been signed by about 10 boaters so we added our boat and a comment to the
pages. It will be interesting to come
back in 10 years and see if it is still here.
After our hike we head back to the boat for sundowners. There are clouds on the horizon so no chance
of seeing the green flash. The green
flash appears just as the sun departs the horizon if there are no clouds or
land. As we are sitting in the cockpit
there is a splash beside the boat. We
lean over to investigate and there are thousands of 3 inch fish swimming madly about and jumping out of the water. We figure
something is chasing them and for the next hour we are entertained by about 20,
8 inch fish chasing about 5000 of these minnow sized fish around the boat. It was cool to watch and hear. 
There is no cell towers or internet on this
island. It is literally an uninhabited
island, so we use our satellite phone to call family. We finally reach Dan (Julie’s brother) to
wish him a happy birthday and get updated on Olympics, life and Ross’s (our
son) provincial races. Good to hear Ross
has gotten gold in the 1500m at OUA’s.
Next is the Canadian University competition in Edmonton in 2 weeks. Way to go Ross! Wish we were there! (Well except for the
snow....)
We cook a traditional Bahamian meal of Mahi Mahi (that we
caught a couple weeks ago). This method
consists of putting everything in a tinfoil bowl so we put chunks of potato,
yam, onion, garlic and the fish and then added a garbanzo bean broth we had
kept, add some salt, pepper, oregano, and carefully put it on the BBQ. It was delicious.
Cheers
Julie and Dawson
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