Life Aboard: Big Majors Spot and Staniel Cay

4-13-2013
So… the weather looks good and we’re leaving Black Point. Blue Heavens came over and told us good-bye. They are heading way south, to Panama so we probably won’t see them again. We hope to keep in touch with email and facebook.

Bye, Gordon and Jeannie. We will miss you!

Jeannie, in the dinghy, watches Gordon and Matthew help launch a boat that Julie helped paint. That's teamwork.

Regatta Point at Black Point.

Good-bye Black Point! The black boat is Coupe 'd Amore

We left about 12:00. It will be a short trip so we didn’t need to leave early. We will miss Black Point; it is a beautiful place with very friendly people.

Pretty house on the way.

Beautiful water and sky

See the blue color in the clouds? That's the water reflecting on them.

Our anchorage at Big Majors Spot. The grotto is underlined in the lower corner.

This large freighter came right thru the anchorage!

This plane landed near the anchorage.

Big Majors Spot is a beautiful place. We took a dinghy ride around to check out the beach, the swimming pigs, and Thunderball Grotto. Yes, I said swimming pigs. When the dinghy gets close to the beach, they walk out to the water and swim to you to get food. Now, I had seen pictures of these pigs on other blogs, but in real life, they are huge! Not cute little piggies, these are big hogs! We will go back later with food and the camera. I told Shay, I didn’t want to get too close to the pigs. We have been told they will try to get in the dinghy to get food. So when we go, he has to be ready to get away in a hurry, in case we get attached!

The grotto was used in the James Bond movie, Thunderball. We checked out the grotto, a cave that you can swim thru and come out on the other side of the island. We need to go at slack low water or when the tide is low. We calculated that tomorrow, we need to be there at 5:00 pm.

180 left this morning heading to Warderick Wells. Emma and David came for a visit and we had lunch on Escape. Or I guess I should say brunch, we had bacon and egg, and cheese sandwich. It was good.

Shay and I took a bumpy ride to the mainland to explore. We saw lots of pretty houses and cottages to rent. We walked to the airport and were very impressed. The check in area was at a golf cart and the terminal looked more like a tiki hut. As you can see by the sign below, security is very high.

The golf cart is the check-in area, the luggage area is at the front of the picture and the blue and yellow shelter is the terminal.

These are the planes.

This is for security reasons, I guess?

This is the b read store. You go to her house and get your bread. Unfortunately, she was out of bread the day we went.

Lots of government stuff going on here, I'm sure.

Beautiful view

This is all conch shells!

Beautiful cottages to rent on Staniel Cay.

More cottages

Bougainvillea

Beautiful

St Luke's Clinic

Cotton left over from slavery days.

We saw these nurse sharks around the marina. A boat was cleaning fish and the sharks ate the scrapes.

I don't think I want to be in the water with them!

This is the dinghy landing area.

Ray swimming around the marina docks

I could stay here, couldn't you?

On the way back to the boat we stopped at “Pig Beach”. There was someone there feeding the 4 pigs, but we still had 2 come out to our boat. As I said before, they are big. We met some other cruisers that told us last year there were 4 baby piglets on the island. She thinks someone must have had a B-B-Q, because they’re not on the island now.

Here it is swimming out to our boat.

We didn't have any food, so they didn't stay long.

Even Emma doesn't look too happy and she's not afraid of anything!

We had a great time at Thunderball. Saw hundreds of fish. Emma had brought some crackers to feed the fish and they loved it. Get out a cracker and the fish would surround you. We snorkeled into the cave. It’s a big open area once you get inside. Then we went out the other side and around the island. It was great. We saw lots of coral, sea fans, and again loads of fish.

This is Thunderball Grotto. The white ball is to tie your dinghy to.

The area to the left of ball, near the edge of the picture is where we went into the cave.

See us with the fish. Yes I am there!

Shay feeding the fish crackers

We went back to the boat and then to the beach for a get-to-gether. We had been invited earlier so we took off. There were several other boaters there and we enjoyed the time we spent with them. We got lots of information about other places to stop on the way north. Margaret and Ken had told us about this beach. Boaters had brought picnic tables, grills, benches, and built a firepit. It was very nice. We even had marshmallows toasted over a fire. After we got back to the boat we took showers and ate a snack. We were tired and watched tv for a while then turned in.

We went to explore the town with Emma and David today. We walked back to the airport and then to Isles Grocery Store. The one thing I really needed was bread and they didn’t have any. We stopped by the yellow house. But they were out of bread so we’ll try at the next island.