On to Long Island with Bikini

March 20, we lifted anchor at 09:30 and headed towards Bikini, anchored just north of us. We headed out Conch Cut due East towards Calabash Bay, Long Island.

Heading to Long Island

I made one last check of the coolant cap to ensure it wasn't leaking...all systems GO. The winds were light and on our nose as predicted; we knew it was going to be a 30 mile motor and not a sail to Long Island today. We had been noticing sea-life growing on BoomDeYada's belly over the past few weeks and were hoping that moving the boat would help most of it to fall off with the anti-foulant paint (bottom paint used by all boats that falls away over time not allowing algae and growth to attach to the hull).

Within 10 minutes of passing through the cut, we were in thousands of feet of water and had two fishing lines out - one Ballywoo and one lure Julie bought me for my birthday. Bikini, right off our port side, also had a couple of lines out. With the sun above, the water was such a beautiful shade of blue, one that we had never seen before...only if we could be sailing! 

As we approached, Long Island provided protection from wind and waves leaving the surface flat and calm. We could easily see the coral heads 40 feet below. Neither boat caught any fish so we stopped outside Calabash Bay and dropped anchor 150' apart to do some spear fishing...finally my first opportunity to use my new spear. Julie and I browsed over a large rock/reef and without even taking a shot we returned to the boat...nothing we saw was worth shooting at. I saw John still diving down just behind his boat so I swam over. He had already speared a grouper and had a small lobster on the spear as I approached. You can tell John is experienced at spear fishing and had the right tool for the job. He speared another grouper right through the head...it died instantly. After hearing stories of shark attacks in the Bahamas while spear fishing, I kept a lookout for sharks as it was around 17:00...their feeding time. John had run out of breathe and left the spear in the grouper at the bottom  so he asked if I could go get it while he caught his breathe. I took a quick look around and dove down 15', grabbed the spear with the Grouper, swam to the surface and held it out of the water (not to attract sharks) while I swam back to the his boat as quickly as possible. After 90 minutes of spear fishing, we lifted anchor and moved a few miles north into Calabash Bay to anchor for the night in 7' of water at low tide. Julie and I got ready to visit Bikini for dinner. As we arrived, John was finishing cleaning the fish and threw the remains overboard. Before he could clean up a 5-6' shark was below his boat to pick up the bounty.

Nancy, Dwayne, Julie and John aboard Bikini

As the sun was setting, we talked about seeing the 'green flash' (when conditions are right, the last second before the sunsets, the sun appears green). It's rare when the sky, humidity and horizon are right to see the green flash. We watched, we waited for the last possible moment to look at the sun without hurting our eyes and there it was, the green flash...if you blink, you'll miss it.

BoomDeYada as seen from Bikini

Calabash is a beautiful bay. However, it has surge...causing our boat to roll side to side making for an uncomfortable sleep.

The next day we started out seeing a few sites that John and Nancy had visited a few times previously. Since they had a charter guest aboard we got to see it all as well. We stopped at a beautiful resort for lunch and walked around the property. (Again I have to apologize that we lost a lot of pictures when our phone died) The resort was on the ocean side of Long Island as opposed to the Bank side where it is protected by the trade winds and shallow. It was amazing to see a man-made pool cut into the rock that allowed seawater to flow from both sides as the tide changed. You can make out two people in the pool on the far end.

A resort pool cut into the shore that gets refreshed with the tides.

The ocean shoreline

Heading in to the caves

We drove another 40 miles, John was looking for a little sign for the caves...easy to miss, not well advertised. The gentleman lead us up a gravel road in the middle of bush...it would be very difficult to find the opening to the cave without the guide. He had flashlights for us all and we went in. To our amazement, the caves were vast, many caverns with large ballroom size spaces at times and sometimes small and narrow that you had to get down on one knee to get to the next cavern. It went on and on, typically in darkness except for our flashlights...sometimes a beam of sunlight came through a hole in the ceiling. Every section had a different species of bats, often swarming around us causing us to duck down and giving us goose bumps. There was bat poop everywhere...great fertilizer.

Nancy sitting on a rock that some say looks indecent 

Taking in the cave and the smell of guano

We traveled another 15 miles further south to Dean's Blue Hole. Click on the hyperlink for photos and info on the Blue hole since I lost those photos too. It's the world's deepest blue hole, over 600 feet straight down used for the world free diving championship.

John standing next to the blue hole

It was a 60 mile drive back to the boats on the only two lane road on this long island. The next day, John gave me a two minute refresher as we prepared to go scuba diving. Wrapped real tight in one of his wet-suits we headed out to coral heads in 40 feet of water armed with spear guns. Our main target was lobster...we scoured three large reefs and didn't see one lobster but we got a good size grouper. On the way back, we quickly snorkeled in shallower water and picked up a small lobster and another grouper.

Another fish story: as both boats left Calabash heading back to George Town, both John and I were ready to drop our lines. As we moved over the ledge from the shallow waters to the ocean depths, about 2000 feet, my large rod started to zing. Whatever I had on the line was taking the line and fast. I tightened the drag on the reel....zing, I tightened it some more, then some more...she was still running out line. With most of my line now off the spool, the drag was now tight enough to stop him from running. The fish drove down deep, I was leaning forward, then reeling in; the rod was bent 180 degrees pointing straight down to the water. After about 10-15 minutes of trying to reel him in my arms were tired and I knew I couldn't keep this up. I instructed the admiral to turn the boat around to chase him so I could reel more line in easier and I asked her to get the camera ready. I knew we wouldn't be able to land this monster but I wanted to see the size of this fish...I had never had something that fought this hard. I was winning now but still more to reeling before I can see him, then he started to run and take more line as he dove further down. I was amazed. At first I thought he was making one last attempt with whatever strength he had, but it must have been a much large monster that took my fish...quickly the line went dead, he was gone; never did see him. I reeled in the line and found that one of my 2.5" hooks were gone. So that's all I have on this fish story.