Day: May 22, 2016
Thunderball Cave
We woke to a gorgeous new day and took the dinghy in to Staniel Cay to pick up some much needed groceries. It had been almost 2 weeks since we purchased any and we were completely out of fruits and vegetables. While pulling the dinghy up to the dock, a shark swam along and parked itself directly below the dinghy, and as we looked around we noticed sharks everywhere! They were so cute.
Staniel Cay is a quaint little town. Every house seems to be painted a different bright color and the locals are so friendly.
We found the grocery store called Burke’s Market, where fruit is a dollar a piece, and peanut butter is twelve bucks for 8oz. Needless to say, we didn’t buy much! It’s a good thing we make all our food from scratch and know how to cook.
While exploring around,looking at the beautiful bouganvillia plants, our parrot friend named Rico, walked past with his owner. For those that have followed our blog from the beginning, Rico is the parrot from Panama that would fly away from his owners and we would spend hours trying to find him. It was so good to see him (and his owner, Dolphin). They were visiting Staniel Cay with their kids.
Our next adventure took us to Thunderball Cave. As you read this section, it is important that you have the James Bond music playing in your head, since his movie (Thunderball) was filmed there in 1965. We stealthily launched the dinghy with snorkel gear in hand, and sped across the water to the large rock mound protruding from the shark infested waters.
We quietly set the anchor, slipped overboard and held our breath as we dove down to enter though an underwater opening into the cave, swimming through the darkness among large schools of fish.
The ceiling of the cave has several holes large enough to jump down through, and the creatures climbed up and did it several times. We played around for a couple of hours, admiring the bright coral and sponges, and numerous reef fish.
Finally in the early afternoon we set sail, making our way south once again. We didn’t have a set destination in mind, but figured we’d sail till sunset, then drop anchor and continue in the morning.
About half an hour before sunset we pulled in to a deserted little bay, and went to drop anchor, just to find that the windlass would not work. We checked switches and connections and couldn’t find anything wrong, so Jude and Mycah pulled all the heavy chain out and dropped anchor by hand. We found out very quickly that the anchor could not hold because we were on a large bed of rock, so they pulled it all up again. After moving around and retrying four more times, we still couldn’t find suitable holding, so moved on to another bay to the southeast and tried once more. This time we hit sand, where the anchor dug deep and held us tight. By now the full moon hung beautifully over the horizon and sent a golden path, glowing across the water toward us. A wonderful end to a wonderful day.
Adventures of a Tribe 