We didn’t make it to the aquarium on our way south, so I’m stoked it worked out now! Aquarium snorkeling was absolutely amazing, definitely a highlight of our time in the Bahamas!

3.24 – Tuesday

The wind was around 10 kts this morning and the sea state was 2 ft in 5 seconds, so we decided to head out, leaving Staniel Cay. The current flushed us out the inlet, where opposing wind and current made things a little hairy. I’d hate to see what it looks like with some real wind.

It wasn’t enough breeze to sail downwind so we motored about 2.5 hours north to O’Briens Cay. This time we were fighting the current to get in. At our lowest we were doing 2 kts against the current, we slowed enough that I started mentally making my bailout plan in case the current overpowered us. It wasn’t fun but we made it in.

We were shocked to see mooring balls here! We’re back in the Land and Sea Park, but not a single review mentions moorings so they must be brand new (I had seen on facebook that the park was adding more moorings, but that was at Cambridge Cay).

We expertly snagged the last mooring and then ate some lunch. Kyle keeps telling me how great at driving I am, and things like this really show it. A lot of boats have trouble with moorings, we’ve never once struggled.

After lunch as we neared slack tide, we suited up and headed over aquarium to snorkel. It was everything promised and more! The fish were so abundant.

I think this is a new species for us, these are both the same! The camo-faced fish is a more juvenile version, and then there’s a full grown stoplight parrotfish! Kyle got some really amazing photos here.

We have some moldy homemade bread, Kyle threw some of that in the water and the fish went nuts. They were swarming us, which we knew would happen, and even though they obviously don’t have teeth it is still a little nerve-wracking!

After getting our fill of snorkeling we explored the sandbar nearby. I found the tiniest of sand dollars. Why is everything so cute when it’s smaller than it’s supposed to be?! Then as we dinghied back to the boat we saw a queen triggerfish swimming along! I wasn’t fast enough with the camera to catch her, bummer!

Tired out, we headed back to the boat to relax. Moving the boat AND snorkeling in the same day is a pretty exhausting!

3.25 – Wednesday

After going through our photos/videos from the aquarium yesterday, we have some things that we could do better so we donned our swim gear and headed back!

We started out at the sandbar first, since there were other boats at the aquarium. We saw the queen triggerfish again and this time I was ready! She was pretty deep so the photos aren’t great, but they are such goofy looking fish!

Back at the aquarium, Kyle got in the water first, and right away he warned me that there was a barracuda in the water. It was staying off in the distance, looking exactly like a scene out of Finding Nemo!

I decided I’d still get in the water, as I didn’t expect it to bother me. I jumped in and kept an eye on the cuda, but then I thought I heard Kyle yell something at me and I couldn’t see the barracuda and I panicked and hopped on top of my inner tube. I realized I would not be able to enjoy my snorkel if I had to keep an eye on the barracuda the whole time. At least I tried!

It was almost like the fish recognized us as the bread people from yesterday, they were extremely friendly with Kyle as he tried to swim around.

I told Kyle his mission was to shoot the queen angelfish. They’re so pretty, but they hang out in deep water and hide behind rocks so it’s really difficult to get good photos. He did his best to chase them down today! Because they are so deep, the photos all have a strong blue tint and even with editing all I can get back are the yellows. It’s amazing how quickly color disappears the deeper you get.

We brought the rest of our bread to throw to the fish. The first video we took is the funniest. We weren’t sure how the barracuda would react once we started feeding the fish, so I was solidly in the dinghy and Kyle was in the water with an exit strategy. I threw some bread in about halfway between Kyle and the barracuda. In the video you can see all the fish race away from the camera, swarm the bread, and then suddenly race back over and then the camera flips as Kyle quickly hoists himself back into the dinghy. He’d forgotten how bullet-like barracuda can be when they attack, he lost sight of it and got nervous! He sustained a pretty steady nosebleed from his deeper diving chasing down the angelfish, so it was a good time to get out of the water!

We decided to take the rest of the videos from the safety of the dinghy. Kyle had the camera and I tossed pieces of bread in. I accidentally dropped one right by the camera and a large yellowtail snapper nipped him. Sorry!

I’ll post a couple videos to facebook and instagram, you really have to see them to understand how many fish were swarming us! When the bread was gone we went to explore another sandbar, but there wasn’t much going on. There are a lot of beautiful beaches here, but it’s not like we need any more time in the sun!

3.26 – Thursday

We decided to move a short distance today, we’d like to check out an area of Compass Cay. As we drove over to Compass, we passed a megayacht named Bold, which has an incredibly unique design. Note the basketball hoop, the floating dock behind the boat, two small center consoles plus jet skis!

We dropped anchor in our shallowest water yet. It was another day where I dropped a depth sounder in a few times around low tide to make sure our rudders wouldn’t hit bottom. We kept around 5’ under us, so almost a foot between the keels and the bottom.

So we’re right at the northern tip of Compass Cay. There’s not much protection here but it should be pretty calm the whole time we’re here. The two big things to do are hike over to Rachel’s Bubbles at high tide, or dinghy over to Rocky Dundas at low tide. For Rachel’s Bubbles you want big seas, and for Rocky Dundas you want it dead calm. We didn’t have high expectations for Rachel’s Bubbles due to how calm it is, but we made our way over to the Sound side of the island just after high tide. The “trail” here is actually a little creek!

It was much better than expected, given our settled weather. We still had waves crashing over the rocks into the tidal pool, which was surprisingly deep! I pretended to swim in the bubble bath but didn’t really.

Then we traipsed all over the rocks to see the Sound side.

There was a lot of swell for how light the wind has been, or maybe after weeks and weeks of strong wind, what I consider “calm” has changed!

By the time we got back to the boat I was pushing the limits of exhaustion. We’ve had so many busy days lately, we’re pushing to see everything left on our Bahamas list but also get back to the States as fast as weather allows.

Due to exhaustion, we didn’t go to Rocky Dundas, which is an underwater cave similar to Thunderball Grotto. I’ve heard it’s the same, just fewer tourists, but I’m not sure if that’s referring to the cave or also to the coral and fish that abound at Thunderball. Either way, we’ve seen an underwater cave, and we’ve snorkeled with a huge variety of fish, so it’s okay if we miss this one. It’s not like tomorrow will be restful, since we’ve got a big day of sailing planned.