We had a wonderful couple of days anchored off North Long Cocoa Cay – a picture perfect spot with palm trees, beach and great snorkeling.

Our plan was to head for Rendezvous Cay, that gets a good write-up in Freya’s book, but it has half finished houses all along the south side, a concrete breakwater around 3 sides, and a beach with No Trespassing signs on the 4th side. What a waste of a pretty island! We didn’t leave the lights of the town to look at the lights of a cay empty except for what looks like abandoned construction so we went next door to North Long Cocoa Cay.

There, we anchored in 16 feet of crystal clear water with a view of palm trees and a pretty little palapa just off the beach. The beach has been cleared of mangroves, has a sign that announces it is owned by the Sittee River Wild Life Reserve – but none of this No Trespassing business. Lovely coral gardens with their resident fishes stretch off both ends of the cay, and on the far side were fishing flats. How can one find a better spot? We were anchored with 2 other boats the first night – lots of space along the SW shore.

The snorkeling was the best yet – and we’ve seen some pretty nice places both in the Bahamas and at Turneffe Atoll – shallow gardens with lots of colour in the coral. Magenta and raspberry and pink, gold and yellow and orange, lime green and chartreuse and neon green, purple and grape and indigo. And the textures are gorgeous too – pipes and tubes and branches of all sorts of colours; golden brain coral, waving purple fronds like the feathers ladies used to wear in their hats, purple and brown fans and coffee coloured stalks with the tiniest little hairs, and pink rubbery things and petite green transluscent fingers, and vases that look like birdbaths with fish that come to pluck bits from it instead of birds coming for a splash. And fishes of the same and every other colour under the sun – and some that are so iridescent they have all the colours right in them! It is all shallow so it feels like floating along through a garden – or a fish tank! Even when the wind was blowing, there didn’t seem to be too much current in the water and the dinghy was always nearby. Oh what pure sheer joy! I thought if I never see anything more beautiful, I will be happy enough. We stayed in the water for hours – with shirts on and waterproof sunscreen slathered on our legs. I’ll get some pictures up eventually but, really, look at some good quality underwater footage on a professional site. It is really like that!!

Liam arrived back in Placencia from his little “vacation within a vacation” at Caye Caulker and we came back to pick him up. Today is provisioning time for a couple of weeks off shore. We’re heading out this afternoon toward Glover’s Reef and plan to spend the first part of next week there as some 20 and 25 kt winds come through. We expect to have some more beautiful snorkeling and fishing up there too.