Mangroves and Iguanas

The Exuma Land and Sea Park, which is the national park for the chain of cays was wonderful. So peaceful and full of interesting landscape, flora and fauna. We picked up and mooring buoy as they prefer visitors to use these rather than anchor and damage the fragile sea grass beds. On the rope up to the buoy was a tiny world of water plants and creatures. I got my camera out and the first 2 photos are the result. The colours in these pictures are totally natural I haven’t changed them at all! When I dove into the water there was a huge Barracuda camping in the shade under Wolfhound’s hull. He was there all day. I went for a snorkel over a coral garden just near the boat and swam with an Eagle Ray. Next we went to Shroud Cay which is criss-crossed with mangrove creeks that go right through from one side of the island to the other. we went exploring in the dinghy and the water in the creeks was so clear and as warm as bath water. Lots of young turtles, rays and small sharks. That, for me, was one of the best experiences of the whole trip. Then it was onto Allan’s Cay which is inhabited by a large colony of Iguanas. When you pull your dinghy up onto the beach they all rush out of the undergrowth in the hope that you have bought them something to eat!

We are now traversing the ’Tongue of the Ocean’ this is an ocean canyon that pushes into the Great Bahamian Bank. The water depth goes from 15’ (5m) to 6,000’ (2,000m) in a nano second. Apparently the wall of the canyon is almost sheer. I will take a photo when we get to the western edge. We will probably anchor on the bank tonight as we don’t want to negotiate getting into Bimini in the dark. It will be very strange to be anchored out of sight of land.

Bimini will be our last stop in The Bahamas as the following day we will be leaving to go across the Gulf Stream to West Palm Beach, Florida. The trip is in a north westerly direction so we will have the 3 knots of Gulf Stream current with us so we should get there pretty quickly.

I will try to post this blog when we get to Bimini tomorrow.