2-17-17 Allan-Pensacola Cay

Why 2 names for this Cay you might ask?  They used to be two separate Cays but during a hurricane years ago sand filled in between them forming one solid cay now.  There is your history lesson for the day.

We arrived and attempted to set our anchor but there were already quite a few boats here and the pickings were slim.  The grass bottom is extremely dense and most anchors cannot penetrate it.  We were trying to drop the anchor in one of the few patches of sand. I guess I wasn’t such a good aim as it took us 3 tries.  But alas, we succeeded and held.

It was too late to explore the Cay that night because we spent the day at Moraine Cay. But the most amazing thing happened!  It was very dark out due to no city lights.  We were out star gazing.  We heard fish jumping.  I got a flash light. There were smaller flying fish literally flying across the water.  I called Scott to see them. But the light scared them off.  I shined the light in the water next to our boat and first there were little fish, then bigger fish, THEN….. an enormous sea turtle swam right up to and under our boat.  If we could have reached the water from the side of the boat we could have touched it.  It was 3 to 4 feet in diameter.  It’s head was huge, at least as big as Scotts.  It was the most amazing thing either of us have experience on this trip.

In the morning, we dropped the dinghy to explore the Cay.  The first thing we found was a makeshift Tiki bar.  It was rather interesting.

What we were looking for was a path that lead across the Cay to the Atlantic ocean.  It was unclear where it was until we found our sign.

When we got to the other side this is what we found:

It is the sign tree.  People made signs, mostly with boat names on them, out of the Flotsam that has washed up on shore. It was a little disheartening to see so much plastic trash on a shore, but in the same breath it is like an art museum with the creativity people put into their signs. There will not be my usual Unique and Random Photo of the Day because these all take that position.

We hiked down the beach.  Scott was itching to snorkel and I wanted to chill in the sand.  Off he went. After a while I came down to the water to see what he was finding.  He came out of the water and said “there isn’t much to see……except for that shark right there”  OMG  We both saw it at the same time.  He was swimming with the sharks again!  He actually went back into the shallow water, spear in hand, to see if he could get a look at him. No way! He was off like a rocket. We actually followed him all the way down the beach. He knew we were there and kept the same, safe distance in front of us.  Darn. We wanted to watch him.

Seeing the snorkeling wasn’t good we headed back to the Abaco Sea side of the Cay to dinghy to another beach.  We snorkeled there and didn’t see tons, but there were small fish sea urchins, sea cucumbers etc. We found another sign “Matty’s Track”

We we started off.  This path was much narrower and in denser woods. There were markings along the path so no one would get lost.  The markings were made of junk that had floated up on shore.

 

When we got to the Atlantic Ocean, it was a very different shoreline.  Very jagged rocks!

There was tons of petrified brain coral washed up on the rocks. I would have liked to keep a larger one, but if I keep that up our boat will sink with all my treasures!

We heard voices coming from the trail.  Someone else braved the trail. A man sees us and says “Oh thank goodness you’re not naked”  We all laughed, then we realized we knew these people. It was Cathy and Michael on Trawler Life, fellow loopers.  Talk about a small world. We will both be staying at the same marina in a few days down at Green Turtle Cay.

We really enjoyed the Cay and the eclectic art.

For those of you that may be counting that is the 4th shark we have seen.

Thanks for reading,

Scott and Karen