April 28th

We left Water Cay early; we had a lot to do today! We beat into the wind a little rounding Water Cay and headed for Goffs Cay. We just motored for it, took about 45 mins. We were right on the reef’s edge and with the wind we were getting 3 foot seas. We came up on Goffs cay from the west. There are several mooring buoys along the NW corner and W side of the island. We were the only people around so we got the closest buoy possible. Grass huts and a weathered dock make this a great place to relax and take pictures. The travel guide said that this island was prone to litter bugs but I only found a few empty bottles lying around. Nothing that was bad. The snorkeling here wasn’t great, a couple of patchy coral heads and grasses along the north face. The better snorkeling was at English Cay off to our S. This island has a functioning lighthouse so it is easy to discern the two. There is one mooring buoy on the west side, at the end of the dock. We almost mistook it for a lobster trap the buoy was so small. The rope was highly weathered and thin. If the seas were small I wouldn’t have any reservations but it was still a bit choppy so I dove the mooring line. We actually took one of our dock lines and made a safety line in case the thin line broke. Upon further inspection, the anchor to the mooring was actually one of the old time boat anchors. You know, the classic Navy tattoo anchor. Weird but worked. The snorkeling on the north side of the island was hands down the best snorkeling I’ve even seen. The depths range from 5-8 feet with multiple coral heads near the island and then drops off to 20 feet along the reef break. It was like the opening scene in Finding Nemo, highways of fish and lobsters. Amazing. A deep skin dive can bring you face to face with large jacks, groupers, angle fish, parrot fish, squirrel fish, ….. I wish we could have spent an entire day there but the day was moving along and we had to make sail. From English Cay, instead of going around the back of the Island of Middle Long Cay, we decided to go in front. DON”T DO IT. The front side of Middle Long Cay is nice with clear waters. Some spotty coral but depths ranged from 6 -9 feet. What the mistake was that on one map the pass between Blue Range Field, the next cay down, and Middle Long Cay had no coral where the other, which was in the cabin, had multiple coral heads. We started to make the pass between the two when almost at once, Val and I saw some brown, shallow patches. Steve seconded the sightings. With probably only 30 secs to spare, the motors were fired up again and turned hard to port. We than found the better chart but was so far into the coral field we were forced to pass through the harbor of Blue Range Field. This was no easy feat either. With one large coral patch in the middle and another on the southern entrance, we had the whole crew on deck looking for trouble. After passing through BFR we had a close call with a squall that snuck up on us from the NE. Not much rain got us but had some good wind and picked up some speed. We anchored at Colson Cay around 4pm. Found a few blue holes on the west side close to the mangroves. When you expect 2-3 ft of water but see the bottom fall out beneath the dingy, it sends a chill down your spine. We had a monohull neighbor to our stern, thankfully a few hundreds yards off since we think the captain was bareassin’ it. Jen got real sun burnt throughout the day and was sick all night. Not fun when you only a few days into the trip.