Day 261, Monday March 10th

Day 261, Monday March 10^th

DP on way to east beach, Jazzebelle in background

Dawson running beach (getting a tan)

The morning shines bright yet again.  Dawson wants to run prior to the day heating up so that is first on the agenda.  Julie joins in on a power walk.  The warm up is hiking to the east side of the island about a kms away.  We are welcomed by a beautiful beach which is about 2 kms in length.  Dawson picks up the pace as does Julie, but Dawson manages the full length of the beach and back and Julie’s pace is only about 50% of that, but nice to the knees.  Dawson runs in barefeet along the beach and you will be glad to know he is running shirtless also, and the farmers tan has been slowly disappearing.  After the high pace, we leisurely walk back to some interesting flopsam on high shore.  Interestingly it appears to be space garbage.  Honestly it looks like it is offcasts from a booster from a space launch.  We find this quite cool as we were raised in the Apollo age of discovery.  Dawson’s investigation of course takes him into “picky” world.  Dawson has an ongoing battle with the ground thorns here.  He has put in an effort to wear shoes, but that is not going so well.  The thorns that grow on the ground are really sharp too.  It hurts the fingers when pulling them out.

Big birds around here

Dawson and space garbage

space garbage

Dawson getting thorns out of feet

Dead moray eel with teeth

We head back to the west side of the island and Julie gives Dawson a haircut.  Julie is getting much better at the haircuts.  We explore the beach and there is a large ray is swimming back and forth along the shore.  Looks like its feeding grounds.  This ray is almost 4 feet across. We believe it is a sting ray which are very common here.  We also come across a dead moray eel on the shore.  Its teeth look nasty and it is starting to stink.

Back to the boat for some relaxation and we decide to re-anchor 3 miles north to Shroud Island as we want to explore there for a couple of days.  The re-anchor is uneventful.  We have to skirt around some sand bars, but this is normal.  Once anchored we head to the north mangrove creek for an explore.  We are surprised at the lack of wildlife.  No turtles, or rays and very little fish.  The creek meanders back and forth and eventually we exit on the east side at the Exuma Sound (basically the Atlantic).   We are shocked as there are about 6 dinghies and 35 people partying and frolicking on shore.  We had noticed that none of the other sailboats in the anchorage had dinghies attached to them but to find them all together was surprising.  Turns out it is a flotilla of boats travelling together on a 1 week charter.  They are all from Montreal and Julie gets to try out her French speaking a bit.

Green lines are our dinghy route thru the island

The beach here is the most beautiful ever.  The contours in the water going from shallow to deep and back to shallow provide an extraordinary range of colours and frolicking opportunities.  We had been told it was a nice beach, but it is a must see beach.  At high tide there is plenty of water to dinghy up the creek. 

Dinghies lined up on beautiful beach

After awhile we head back and take a different channel in the hopes we can do a loop versus return the way we came.  It looked like we were at a dead end and about to turn when we spotted some darker blue and sure enough we were able to get through to another arm of the creek.  The view was not terribly different but always nice to explore new areas, plus it follows the “never go back rule” created by Dawson and John Renwick at university when they went grocery shopping (picture the young lads going up and down the grocery aisle and refusing to go back if they missed something on the list.  The roommates had to suffer the never go back rule).

Julie at beautiful beach-Shroud Is.

Back on board we had a typical evening of games, coffee and early to bed.  Julie finished book within 30 hours of getting it from Barrie and Wilma a Ken Follett novel.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson