April 29th....Treasure Cay to Baker's Bay

We left Treasure at around 9:30 and had a brisk sail almost due east to Bakers Bay, a trip of about 12 miles. Baker's Bay is a resort that is in various stages of completion. The very northern end of the bay seems to have quite a few completed buildings... and we know that guests stay there so that area must be finished. The remainder of the property... a couple of miles of shoreline is all being developed at this time. Although cruisers are allowed on the beaches... to the high water line, they are not welcome on the property. They are building a large marina and guests there will have the run of the place.

It's not all that desirable an anchorage but from there you can see the "Whale Cay Cut" and can better judge its condition. There is also some great shelling on Spoil Cay about a mile to the west.

As we arrived "Solitaire" was just getting ready to traverse the Whale passage and we were in the process of deciding whether to join them when "Madcap" arrived from Fisher's Bay. Beth wanted to go shelling ... and the Whale looked a little bad, so our decision was made.

There aren't really many good beaches in the Bahamas for shells. The Atlantic side is almost all protected by reefs which have the tendency of grinding all the shells into pink sand. Spoils island, because it is located just inside a rather deep cut, is different and there are shells everywhere, although they are mostly small.

We spent a couple of hours wandering the island collecting and playing with hermit crabs before heading back to the boat. When we got back to the boat we discovered that one of our shells had crawled out of the bag and was walking in the bottom of the dinghy. (I knew I wasn't supposed to pick up the shells with legs!) We made a little home in a bowl with some pink sand we had collected and fed it some lettuce, which seemed to make it happy.

Beth and Jim invited us to dinner to try out a new coconut chicken recipe. As always, we had very pleasant evening with the Madcap sailors.