A short, very nice sail with perfect wind and calm seas, blew us right unto the anchorage in Buena Vista Cay. The water is fairly deep almost right up to the beach, but the bottom is covered with flat rocks as you get closer to the beach. We decided to drop anchor about 500 yards from the beach, but the weather was calm and settled, so we didn’t expect too much surge for the duration of our stay. There were three other boats the day we anchored, but the next day two left to go further south and the third boat left shortly after them to go north, so we again had the whole island to ourselves.
To our surprise there were also a few marked hiking trails on the island. One went up to a little hill with a few caves in the cliffs, but we didn’t have proper shoes on to explore much of that trail.
On one of the first relatively calm days in a long time, we took a dingy ride towards the Atlantic ocean and went around Low Water Harbor Cay. The tide was very low and we bumped on some rocks until a wave carried us off and we were back to safety.
For the first time since I’ve been trawling a fishing rod behind the dinghy in the hopes of catching something, an osprey-like bird grabbed the lure and flew off with it. I was very worried that he would get hurt, but fortunately he dropped the lure after a short flight, but was then still chasing after it until I reeled it all in. Only when I was sure that he had lost interest, did I put the lure back in the water, but with no luck catching any fish.
As we went ashore on the south side of the island, we discovered a nice hiking route to the bay side. It was a relatively short walk, so we decided to go around the point of the island over the rocks back to the dinghy. This turned out to be a much more challenging route than we expected. The interior salt pond is huge but the edges where we needed to walk was soft, muddy and smelling like a swamp.
The water was blue, calm and inviting, so we geared up and went to snorkel on some coral heads that we saw with the dinghy. It was one of the healthiest reefs that we saw in quite some time. There were lots of soft corals, sea ferns, a variety of fish species, a turtle, a ray and a nurse shark, amongst other things. Indeed a very refreshing and exciting snorkel.
We spent another night hunkered down against fairly strong winds, but at least we had a beautiful full moon to keep us company. One boat arrived late in the afternoon and anchored a ways off. Later yet another boat appeared on the horizon but they sought shelter behind Nurse Cay for the night. the following morning we all left at about the same time, but we were the only boat going north.
