Rudder Cay

We traveled a "whopping" 3 miles to get to our next anchorage, Rudder Cay.  The story is that David Copperfield owns the island right before Rudder Cay - Moshu Cay.  He rents it out for over $300,000/week or more!  Copperfield wanted to give his guests something different to see under the water, so he commissioned an underwater artist to sculpt a statue - yep, a grand piano with a mermaid - and had it placed under the water.  His guests now had a scavenger hunt while snorkeling in search of this statue.  Ed and I motored for a while around where it was said to be according to the chart.  We could not find it.  Ed got out his portable GPS, got the coordinates from the chart book, and, voila, we found it.  We got out of the dinghy to snorkel around it.  It was very impressive!  David had the artist make holes in the piano for the wildlife in the sea.

It was cloudy under the water following a storm the night before.  In person I could see it more clearly.  The detail is amazing!  See Ed's blog for a better photo.

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We took our dinghy around this part of the island, but the tide was coming in so we couldn't do any more snorkeling.

Another really neat part of this island was the cave that you could take a boat in!  We saw several tour boats go in there. 

We took our dinghy in and it had some fantastic rock formations in there!
 

This was huge ray we saw outside the cave.
 

 Our time here was short, just 1 night.

Tomorrow's destination - Georgetown - it's the furthest south we will go - and it's our 1/2 way point! 

Cave Cay #2

We continue to enjoy and appreciate lots of beautiful scenery!  All of this taken in from a hike on Cave Cay.

Serene Banks of Cave Cay

The Sound Side

These houses were not lived in.  If all goes well, the owner told us he wants to rent these.  Right now the Bahamian Government, which works slowly, is holding up the permits.

Gayleen and Ed on the porch of a house that may one day be a restaurant

Every where on the island there are plants that have burrs on them.  Whenever they brush up against your leg a little prickly burr would stick to whatever it touched.  I learned the hard way that it was good to lift your feet up to avoid these burrs. If you brushed up against one of the plants the burrs would stick to your shoes, pants, skin, etc. I tripped on a root along the path and got burrs in all the wrong places!

    ouch!!!!


 




Rudder Cay is next.  Did you know there are mermaids here?  They also play the piano!  Follow along to find out if this is for real!
 

Cave Cay #1

We came into Cave Cay along with our friends, Bruce and Gayleen, on Pearl to escape 50 knot winds. It turned out to be a nice marina overall.      It was a work in progress, though. They had a bath house with showers with plenty of hot water (most of the time. Someone left the hot water on in the other shower that I was in and all I had was cold water. I was hot after a long walk, so the cold water actually felt pretty good.) Only 1 of the 2 toilets was working and the sink faucet turned all the way around, and no one swept or dried the wet floor the whole time we were there. Everything else was very nice. They had free washing machines, which is a welcome change from $3.00 a load at other places. There were no dryers, so we hung up our clothes on the lifelines of the boat. My wash load was Ed's and mine underwear so our boat looked pretty funny for a while with undies blowing in the wind! The man on the boat next to ours said our boat reminded him of his college days when there would be panty raids in the girls' dorms!

Cave Cay Marina

There was a runway on the island where small planes landed and took off from there. Often the planes are delivering provisions to a nearby island that doesn't have an airport. I was told Tim McGraw and Faith Hill have an island close by as well as David Copperfield. We saw David Copperfield's island the day we left this island.

I had asked a question a day or so before this stop if sea planes could land on land as well as water.  My question was answered when we watched a sea plane land on this runway. 

Walking the runway

There was a cave on the island and we were told to ask Shark, the dock master, for a tour.  Because of the influx of boats coming in seeking shelter, Shark was too busy to walk us there. When he got free enough after a couple of days, it was the day that it rained, so we didn't get to see the cave. Instead, we took a nice long walk around some of the island with Bruce and Gayleen and found several beaches with lots of shells.

Old Coral walkway

Gayleen

Bruce

We found some live creatures that looked like snails. We took about 8 of them back to the boat, and from Shark's cooking directions, I boiled them, took them out of their shell, got rid of the parts I didn't think were edible and cut up the rest, sauted them in butter and garlic. This was my lunch that day. No one else wanted even a taste! They were very good. Tasted like conch to me. Chewy just like conch.

 

Chewy - but Yummy!

Big Majors Spot

The answer to the riddle from the last blog - did anyone guess it? - pigs!  We went to Big Majors Spot where there are feral pigs on the island.  People everywhere we met encouraged us to come here to see the colony of feral pigs that come to your boat looking for a handout. We arrived at Big Majors but did not see all the pigs we were told about. We anchored and got in our dinghy and went to the beach where they should have been. There was one big female pig on the beach eating some "slop" from a big tub. Behind her was a small baby pig. All the other pigs had already eaten a lot of food from other visitors and were napping elsewhere on the island. I was happy to at least get to see these two!

Besides the Pigs there were Roosters and Chickens

Female pig eating out of her tub. All kinds of food was in there - carrots, hot dog buns, green veggies. To the pig I am sure it was all delicious, but it did not look appetizing at all to me!

Baby Pig - she (or he) was a lot shyer that the big pig

Two girls came on the beach and were feeding the pig tortillas. The pig happily left her bucket for the tortillas!

They led the pig into the water with one.

 My turn for feeding her!  I was so excited!

She ate some of the carrots I had, but she really gobbled down some chunks of spaghetti squash I had. She was gentle taking the food out of my hand. Her hair is very coarse when I petted her.

They had a very sad event happen a few days before we got there. The pigs got food poisoning from people who fed them spoiled food, and 7 of the 30 pigs died from it! We were told the vets were there giving them shots. I hope that doesn't happen any more! One of the volunteers who was on the island told us about this, and said they will be making some restrictions on people for the pigs protection. The pigs are also not getting enough exercise. They used to go in the water and swim to get their food but now that more people are going on the beach to them they don't swim as much as they should.

The shoreline of Big Majors was very interesting. There were a few cave like holes in the rock as well as several beaches.

One of these beaches was set up for a party. There was a picnic table, a grill, lawn chairs, an awning for shade. An umbrella over the table, a corn hole game, and an area that looked great for a campfire. It turns out that people have donated these things over the years for boaters to get together for sundowners and such. The sign for the place was Pirate's Island.

These 2 photos reminded me of Boo Boo Hill in Warwick Wells where you left your name plaque there.  People did similar things.  Some drew on the picnic table.  

We only stayed one night due to some bad weather coming in. They were calling for up to 50 knot winds so we decided to go to a marina on Cave Cay - so no snorkeling for us here with the pigs!

Next.....shelter at Cave Cay.

Cambridge

Our next stop was to Cambridge Cay.  We were able to meet up with our friends, Bruce and Gayleen, who live on their boat, Pearl.  We hadn't seen them in a while so this was a real treat for us.

One of the first things we did with our friends was go on a dinghy ride to Rachel's Bubble Bath.

Bruce and Gayleen had their son, Brandon and his girlfriend, Sophia, visiting them on their boat.  Sophia jumped in from the rock.  Both Brandon and Sophia are athletically inclined.  This area is called Rachel's Bubble Bath because at high tide water comes crashing over the rocks by Sophia's left side.  We only saw trickles come over them since it was low tide.  Brandon and his mom, Gayleen are on the rock above Sophia.

Our next dinghy stop was to Rocky Dundest.  There was an opening under the rock and when you swam under it for just a little while it opened up into a big beautiful cave!

Gayleen getting her snorkeling gear on.  The dark area above the water in front of her is where we swim through.

This was under the water right before entering the cave.  One large fish was there.

This is what you see as soon as you get past the opening!

This was one of the coolest sites we saw in this cay! 

Next destination?   Here's a guessing game.....at the next island there's an animal that has 4 legs, a curly tail, and ...........