Staniel Cay, Bahamas
24.10.345N
76.26.766W
What a night! Dale commented twice that he didn't think it had ever been so quiet at anchor or in a slip. There was no wind; the only sound from the water came when the current changed with the tide and a few slaps started the boat turning in the new direction. Needless to say, we slept well.
The morning didn't bring any changes. Since there was still no wind, we took the Exuma Sound (east side) route as opposed to the Banks (west side) route. A quick motor down to Staniel had us fueled and tucked into a slip by 11:00 am. At $3.80 per gallon, we considered ourselves lucky for needing only 30 gallons; the next guy took over a 1000 gallons to fill up.
There are 3 other boats in the Staniel Cay Yacht Club. Apparently, this is still about a month before their 'season' starts. There are a couple of restaurants, a couple of cottages for rent, a couple of boutiques for souvenirs, one church and 3 small general stores; the Pink Store, the Blue Store, and the Isles General Store.
We met Roger and Elaine off 'DocNoMore' at the fuel pumps. Roger is a retired urologist and Elaine is a retired teacher. Elaine started telling me all of the local information and the big thing to remember is that tomorrow the mailboat comes in and to be at the Isles General Store before noon to get a good selection of produce before its gone. Apparently, they've been living aboard their catamaran for the last 4 years and coming to the area from Texas during 'the season' for those 4 years. This year, however, they decided that they are going to go all of the way to Trinidad. Since they were anchored over at the next island where "Thunderball Cave" is, we promised to get together with them tomorrow when we move in that direction.
We had lunch at the Yacht Club (a hamburger never tasted so good), walked around the town, then headed back to the Palace. As we passed down the main pier, there were fishermen cleaning their catch and tossing the refuse to the dozen or so nurse sharks and a few rays. Each of these sharks were 4-6' long and each of the rays had about a 2.5-3.5' wing span. I'm not sure if the sharks were full or what but they were very well behaved during this time. They'd slowly swim in, take their food and then slowly swim back around. None of the thrashing about we've seen in the past. When we stepped from our boat to the dock later in the day, we noticed that 4 of the sharks had taken refuge in the shade of the bottom of our boat. I realize that nurse sharks aren't supposed to be aggressive and it really didn't bother me seeing them under our boat, but in my mind, sure footedness is essential for the remainder of our stay. Although, if I fell, I'm quite sure that I'd have a dying duck fit and never come close to touching the water.
Tomorrow we'll wait for the mailboat, grab our fresh fruit and veggies, then move over to Big Major's Spot, where "Thunderball" and "Splash" were filmed.
