Rather expensive
01 May 2018
As we approached the island we contacted the harbour master on Ch16 using the VHF radio, they then gave us some rather dodgy instructions, we had eye contact also, I saw this chap stood on one pontoon pointing and waving at us but as we got close to him he just turned away from us and started walking away, leaving us not knowing what to do or where to go. It took us about an hour to clear in. We motored out into Pig Sty bay to pick up a mooring buoy. Grand Cayman is a place where people come and hide their money 💴 away, because it is a tax free country, I have never seen such a vast difference between the have's ( Grand Cayman 🇰🇾 ) and the have not's( Cuba 🇨🇺) which are only 150 miles apart, here you can buy almost anything you want, at an inflated price.
We took the bus 🚌 along the coast to a small place called HELL, here I bought 3 post cards and sent them away (if you happen to get one it has been stamped from Hell I was told that they are quite rare (around 30 a day are stamped by the post office)).
The sea 🌊 is some of the cleanest I have been in with visibility around 75 metres, the fish are every where. We went snorkelling, I thought I had been stung on my nipple by a jellyfish, it felt like I had been prodded with an electric cable, I told Jane who decided to go back to the boat, then I caught a glimpse of a fish very close to me, it turns out that it was a smallish remora (I ate one of its relatives in New Caledonia 🇳🇨last year) and I think it decided to take a piece of me as revenge with its small but sharp teeth, only a small amount of blood was spilt but rather painful for a couple of hours.
The auto pilot was fixed (US$ 350) which will make the 400+ mile hop to Belize 🇧🇿 so much easier, the outboard engine on the dinghy has developed more problems, it now turns out that some fuel that was given to us had neat alcohol in it, the skipper had another repair bill for US$ 275. Hopefully she won't have to pay out again.
We have motored the boat ⛵️about 8 miles up the coast so that we can go snorkelling in a place called stingray city, it is in a large bay, just off Barkers point. We jumped into the dinghy and went the few hundred metres. I jumped in just on the edge of the reef line, the fish 🐟 were not very forthcoming to start with, so I went deeper into the reef, now the fish were all over the place, all sizes and colours, I found 1 large lobster trying to hide under a coral buttress, he was rather aggressive when I tried to film him, so I left him in peace. We moved over to be with about 5 other boats ⛵️here the sea was teeming with fish 🐠 that were being fed pieces of squid by hand 🤚, there were also 10 or more large stingrays (over 1 metre across) all being very friendly, they came right up to us and rubbed against our skin, we could even stroke them, one even tried to eat my GoPro camera 🎥 (mistaken identity) this dive was the best by far here in the Caribbean. Last night I even saw a leatherback turtle 🐢 swimming by, it was about 2 metre long but it was much to brief in its appearance for me to get my camera out.
We set sail for Belize 🇧🇿 at 11:00, this leg should take us about 3.5 to 4.5 days depending on the wind.
In the afternoon of our 3rd day we were visited by another pod of dolphins 🐬 they showed up by splashing around along side of our boat ⛵️we estimate that there were over 40 of them, again I rushed up to the bow with my camera, they were having so much fun dodging and darting all over the place, there was a particular youngster that was going so fast that it was leaping completely out of the water 💦 and showing off, they stayed with us for over half an hour before they left, the appearance of these beautiful mammals was the highlight of my day, their friendliness seems like a thing of pure trust between us, you can just tell that they enjoy being with us whilst showing off their swimming skills.
We have had very little wind so our passage has been very slow down to less than 2mph for almost 24 hours, we have decided to put the motor on, which I'm not too keen on, I would rather just float along an get there when we get there. No sight of other traffic for more than 2 days, all this ocean 🌊 to ourselves, its a great feeling.