We decided to go diving at Fowl Cay again, and this time to dive near the dive mooring buoys on the Atlantic side of the reef. This involved going through the North Man O’ War passage into the Atlantic, and then picking our way through the reefs to the moorings. There are only two of them, and they both had small boats on them, and in any event, the moorings are designated for use only by boats under 24’. We thought that we would be fine if we dropped our anchor on a sandy patch, but when we did this, a guy on one of the boats on a dive mooring yelled, “do me a favor and don’t anchor there”, and a dive boat from Dive Guana came by to tell us not to anchor there as well. We were subsequently informed that this was Troy from Dive Guana and he had apparently been calling us on Channel 16 to tell us not to anchor - which means, of course, everyone in the Sea of Abaco heard him! As he approached our boat, he told us that our anchor had dragged onto coral and could damage the reef, and that he would send a diver down to get our anchor out of the coral. He told us to anchor in a sandy area, which was maybe a quarter mile from the reef. Dive Guana’s young diver removed the anchor from the coral we had dragged as I pulled the chain in, and we proceeded to the indicated sandy spot and re-anchored.
We geared up, entered the water, inflated our BC and swam perhaps 400 yards toward the reef. We submerged, and were successful in finding “Grouper Pass”, an opening in the reef that we swim through underwater to reach the deeper and more interesting Wall - reef. The site is a great dive, and even justified all the humiliation I claimed to have sustained for improper anchoring! The “Wall” drops down to about 50 feet at its deepest point and is a beautiful reef with the usual reef fish that we love to see. On the way back from this dive we watched a large Southern Stingray - about 5 feet across munching its way across the sandy bottom. All the way back from our dive we had a large (4-5 foot) barracuda that was curious about us and so followed us back to our boat.

On another occasion, we took a three-day trip from Hope Town to dive Sandy Cay. Like Fowl Cay, Sandy Cay is a Bahamian national park, located not far from the southern end of the Sea of Abaco. We sailed south with a “buddy boat” from Hope Town - Hanalei. Hanalei is an ocean going sailing yacht which had sailed all the way around the world! There boat is so large that it even has a dishwasher!! To say that her owners Kristine and Stephan, are experienced sailors would be a classic understatement. We sailed and anchored off Bridge Cay. We were invited to dinner on Hanalei - cocktails, French Wine, pork chops, spinach salad! Yum! We played a game - Apples to Apples and even I - who normally hates games - had a great time. We returned to the boat under a quarter moon in a starlit night - there were only a few anchor lights showing in the bay.

The following day we sailed to Sandy Cay and were able to anchor (the holding is very poor). Kristine and Stephan snorkeled on the shallow reef on the south side of the Cay, while we explored it with SCUBA. The coral and small tropical reef fish on this shallow reef were beautiful. Merry spotted a loggerhead turtle. That night we sailed back to a safe anchorage at Lanyard Cay so that we could return to Sandy Cay the next day. This time we anchored north of the Cay - this anchorage must be popular because right after we anchored five other boats came in, three of them were big 45’ Hunter sailboats (Charter boats). They all took dinghys to the dive moorings to snorkel the reef on the “Atlantic side” of Sandy Cay. However, I decided that we would gear up for SCUBA and swim 1/2 mile from the anchorage to the reef. This was a long swim even with BC’s and fins. There is a big rock (maybe 50’ across) that is out perhaps 150’ from the Cay, and although waves were breaking over the reef between the rock and Sandy Cay, I decided that we could swim through these, over the reef, as a “short cut” toward the deeper water where the dive moorings were. Early on in this attempt, we struggled to get through this passage by holding on to coral by our fingertips - the current was strong. Merry poked her head up and said, “forget this!” and just after she did a wave lifted her up and tossed her down onto a sea urchin with one of the spines going all the way through the wet suit into her breast! Ouch! We backed out, and swam around the rock and finally reached the deeper part of the reef. This reef is called the Coral Gardens. We saw several of the dive moorings underwater and could see why they are limited to vessels under 24’ - they are pretty flimsy looking. The dive was great - Merry spied another turtle - I missed it (AGAIN!) and we both saw a pair of Eagle Rays swim right over us. The Coral was magnificent as well as various colored sponges. The reef fish - Angel Fish, Barracuda, Midnight Blue and Rainbow Parrot Fish, Seargent Majors, lavender and blue Tang all showed up to entertain us. We used up most of our air and then swam the (over) 1/2 mile back to our boat with Merry in considerable pain from the mean sea urchin. Note to anyone who is punctured by a sea urchin - use antibiotic ointment immediately afterward or things get kind of ugly!