Sailing Ohana

We chose to go south from the Exumas Land and Sea Park, on the “outside” of the islands so that we we would be able to fish from our boat. It also gave Jackson the chance to throw his message in a bottle out to sea. The sail down to O’Brien Cay was uneventful, quick, and as we prepared to re-enter the boundary of the park, Tommy began reeling in the fishing lines. He was working on one of them, and the other one started making the whizzing sound that tells us that we have a fish on the line! The boys jumped up to help, and began the arduous process of reeling in a huge fish. I went to the helm and to steer us away from the land and sea park boundary while the boys slowly pulled the fish closer and closer to our boat. It jumped a few times and we were able to see that it was a giant mahi-mahi or dolphin fish as some people call it. There were a few moments of a huge splashing struggle just about 50 yards from our boat, and after that they were able to reel in the fish. As they pulled him up into the aft cockpit, we could see that he had a couple of big bites taken out of him by a shark! Even with the tax that the shark charged us, we had enough mahi-mahi to feed us and our friends for several meals.

I somehow neglected to take photographs at O’Brian, probably because we didn’t stay long, and I was frustrated by a couple of things while we were there. When we anchored, I felt that we were too close to our friends’ boat and at one point when we were snorkeling and looked over at our boats, it appeared as though they had run into each other. Thankfully it was just an optical illusion; we did re-anchor further from them though. The other frustrating part was that there were no good beaches for Morris, except one that is on an island nearby which is owned by Johnny Depp and has a ginormous sign on the beach that says, “This is not Disney and you are not welcome”. I have to admit that I landed the dinghy there and took Morris ashore a couple of times, because the island appeared to be totally uninhabited, as are many of the islands in this area.

The big draw to this area is a beautiful snorkeling/diving cove that is called “The Aquarium”. It lived up to its name. There were huge coral heads in a lovely protected spot, and marine life in every color imaginable. A couple of older snorkelers went out earlier when the tide was going out, and they swam a little too far, got stuck in the current, and started yelling for help. It was reassuring to see that within seconds there were three sailboat dinghys in the water speeding over to save them. They were fine, but definitely shaken up. It was a good reminder of why we always time our snorkeling and swimming with the tides.

The boys made up for of the lack of a beach by jumping off a rope swing from our friends’ boat during the very peaceful slack tide in which there was no current and the water was like glass. That was a major highlight of the trip for Spencer. We went over to their boat for negronis at sunset and the boys made us fried mahi strips which even I really enjoyed.