Staniel Cay and Blackpoint

On May 25, Russ and Kelly came over so we could all go to Pig Beach. Although this is probably the most touristy thing in the Exumas, we weren’t going to miss it! Russ had brought some food scraps he was going to feed to the pigs.

The pigs are curious but do not like Russ’ leftovers 🙂
They really do swim over to your dinghy

In the afternoon, we were able to re-provision some vegetables at the Blue Store, and took a walk across the island.

May 26 had us visiting another very touristy place, the Thunderball Grotto. At low tide you can snorkel into the grotto and see the light shine in from above. Although we weren’t the only ones ;-), it was pretty cool.

Later that day we hiked across to the oceanside beach on Staniel Cay to take a walk on the beach, but ended up doing a beach cleanup. It is pretty depressing how much plastic trash washes up on the beautiful beaches here. We had dinner off the lunch menu at Staniel Cay Yacht Club, a nice break for Anya from cooking for weeks on end!

May 27 we had a relaxing day at anchor in Staniel Cay, and made some freshwater with our Rainman R/O system. We got to watch as a seaplane landed, picked up people from the yacht next to us, then taxied around our boat and took off. Very cool to watch!

We finally had a sunset that was not covered with clouds, and it looked like the sky was on fire!

On May 28 (Anya’s birthday), we lifted anchor at Staniel Cay to sail south to Blackpoint. With only the genoa to sail with, we went pretty slow, and had to tack a lot since we were going into the wind. We sailed most of the day to go 9 miles, but we got there at 2 pm. We immediately met some other cruisers in this pretty anchorage, only sailboats here (no superyachts). We walked around this quaint Bahamian village that has kept it’s local vibe. We had a beer at Emerald Sunset Bar overlooking the bay and got some groceries, since the mailboat had arrived that day. We then went to Scorpio’s to meet the other cruisers, and then Rob got Anya her birthday dinner at Lorraine’s. The food was very good, but the waitress was the grumpiest I had ever experienced :-)! Corey and Alisha had invited us to come on their boat after dinner, so we ended the evening with a fun group of cruisers.

Lisa, John, Alisha,Corey, Anya, Rob, Robert, Nicola

On May 29 we started the day with a big breakfast, and finally did our laundry. Since we do laundry as we shower, we can get by for weeks without a laundramat, but it is nice to have fresh sheets every once in a while… In the evening we went back to Scorpio’s with Nicola and Robert, and met some really nice locals. We decided on a sunset dinner at Emerald Sunset, and DJ (the local DJ, go figure) kept us company.

On May 30 we geared up for a big hike to the northern tip of Blackpoint and Gotham Cut. On the way we stopped at the Blow Hole. To take a picture, you had to wait for the “blow” and then run quickly 🙂

Since there was no path where the map said there was one, we just made our way north along the beaches and cliffs. It was great exercise!

Since everybody had left and we were the only boat in the anchorage, it was Rob and Anya and the locals night at Scorpio’s. We ran into the usual suspects and Shiwago made us a fantastic dinner of grilled fresh snapper in broth. What a cool day!