Onward to Cat Island and the Lobster

By Capt. Scott Buckley

We passed a pleasant night at Hog Cay at the north end of Long Island and ran into friends (Mark and Linda on SV Dev Ocean) that we had not seen since Farmers Cay.  The Snorkeling was very good there.

We left in the AM to cross over to Emerald Bay Marina to take on water, do some provisioning, take a real shower and get some laundry done and then leave to cross over to Cat Island.  We rented a car to ride down to Georgetown to provision and did a little sight seeing while we were out.

Salt Pond Monument

Tropic of Cancer Beach

Mom's Bakery

We had originally planned to head down to the Jumentos where the lobster fishing should be better but the winds and tides meant that that would be a 2 or 3 day journey so we changed plans to instead head to Cat Island.  I had been trying to catch a lobster or two for the 1st mate but I either saw them in areas it was prohibited to take lobster or they were too small.

We  left Emerald Bay in the AM to head to Hawks Nest at the south west end of Cat Island. 

Cat Island on the horizon

Again the water was nice for Snorkeling.  The next day we headed around the south end of the Cat Island to Port Howel, a little known cut into the reef where we could anchor and due some additional snorkeling. 
We ended up staying for 2 days and snorkeled almost non stop.  I managed to catch 4 lobsters while we were there.  One of them was massive.  We gorged ourselves on lobster that night.


Port Howell looking West 

Port Howell anchored next to a coral head

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Where to go where to go?

We did not know really where we were heading next and we were really missing our friends on SV Alice Mae so we decided to head to Conception Cay where they said they might be headed. 
Again we left in the AM and in route I tried to reach them on the marine VHF radio. To our surprise they answered and we told them we were headed to Conception.  They were just leaving Conception and pleaded with us to reconsider and meet up with them in Cat Island.  They had been missing us a lot.  They explained the condition of the reef and the snorkeling had been disappointing.  It was not hard to convince us because we had been missing them a lot as well.

New Bite Cat Island

We met up with them in New Bight on Cat Island.  We had dinner ashore at Hidden Treasures and it was the best food I have had in the Bahamas so far and oddly the cheapest.  It may have been reuniting with our friends that made it all that much better.  We also ran into Pru and Bert from SV Exuberance and got them to join us for dinner.

We did a little site seeing in New Bite.  A visit to the Hermitage is a good idea.  It is the highest point in the Bahamas and everything is miniature.  Which is kind of cool if you want to feel like a giant.  And who does want to do that once in a while.

Ma' I'm at the top of the world.

We are giants.

New Bite to Arthur Town  

From New Bite we moved up to Arthur Town.  The town was disappointing and the weather turned nasty with a 15 knot onshore breeze.

Little San Salvador

From Arthur Town we moved up to Little San Salvador.  The winds were unfavorable for anchoring in Half Moon Bay so we tried to find and anchorage on the north side of the island. 

This area is uncharted and it was nerve racking.  SV Alice Mae with here 3’ draft was able to snug up to the coast and find a good spot.  We on the other hand worked our way slowly thru the reef to find a spot to anchor in 25’ of water.  I put out 120’ of anchor line and jump into the water to swim the anchor swing circle.  I found shallow coral head on both sides.  My gut was telling me to leave.  If something happened in the night and we had to pick up anchor we would not be able to see anything in the dark and the charts were completely useless for navigation in this uncharted region.  We would not be able to get out of this area because we had threaded our way into it visually.  When I told the 1st mate my gut said leave she immediately started pulling the anchor.  She said if my gut said leave that was good enough for her.  We anchored in Half Moon Bay and rolled a bit on anchor through the night but it was not so bad.

Little San Salvador is owned by the cruise lines and you are not to anchor in their harbor when a cruise liner is in.  As we approached Half Moon Bay the Cruise liner was just leaving so in we went.
There was no cruise liner the next day so we hung around and did some more snorkeling and lobstering.

  

The next morning we would head to Eleuthera