Long Island

It was a fantastic day for a sail with a beam reach of 12-15 kts, which of course increased to about 20 kts as we approached our destination of Long Island. Richard had put out a fishing line and it wasn’t long before he caught a fish, unfortunately it was a 3-foot barracuda. Some people do eat barracuda but there is a higher risk for ciguatera so he choose to throw it back.

    There were about 15 boats in the harbour when we arrived, we anchored behind Larry and Sue from KTen and we enjoyed Sundowners on our boat with them that evening. The next morning the four of us hiked around the island for water, diesel and garbage drop off and checked out the tourist bureau, grocery store and a couple of other stores.

   We made plans with Larry and Sue to rent a car on Thursday morning to see more of the Island. The car wasn’t at the dock where we had arranged to pick it up so we hiked to what we thought was the car rental place only to be directed to the owner’s house. Meanwhile Sue thought that it might have been dropped off at the other dock so she hiked there as we headed for the owners house. After no answer at the house we headed back to the garage as Sue drove up with the car from the other dock…the funny thing was that it was just sitting at the dock with the keys in it and the rental agreement on the seat, no need of a credit card number here…. It was a bit of a mix up but we certainly got to stretch our legs before our drive:)

   Long Island is 80 miles long and about 4 miles wide and since we had started in the middle we headed north first. Our first stop was at Morris Tomb, which is from the plantation days; across from it was a large Blue Hole. Further north we stopped at a marina and then on to Columbus Monument commemorating his arrival here in 1492. It was located at the very end of the island high on a hill the view was spectacular! On the way south we stopped for lunch at Forest Take out and had our first Hamburger and fries in 7 months, it was really good! After lunch we headed for Deans Blue Hole where the World Free Diving Competitions are held each year. It is the first Blue Hole that we have seen which is located adjacent to a beach and it was absolutely beautiful! The hole is literally a hole on the beach with a steep drop off four feet from the waters edge to a depth of 663 feet! The snorkeling was amazing with lots of fish and clear water. We had the place to ourselves but there were two couples on the other side of the beach that were from Canada… we are surprised at how many Canadians we have met here. We continued to the southern most end of the island where we walked along beautiful Gordon’s Beach and passed the salt ponds. We were hoping to hit Cartwright’s caves on the way back but it was too late in the day. We arrived back at the dinghy just before sundown and caught a glimpse of another turtle in the water; they are shy so it’s a treat to see them for any length of time.

   The four of us had decided to head back to the caves for a tour on Friday. It was a good 20 miles from our location but everyone assured us that it was easy to hitch a ride since we didn’t want to rent a car again. Sure enough the first truck that came along picked us up and took us to his destination of about 5 miles down the road. As it was a very hot day we were very happy with our success and figured it would be no time before we reached our destination…wrong…. first off there weren’t very many cars and many were small and there were four of us… After about 3 miles of walking in the heat we finally managed to get a ride from a lovely lady who was a cousin to the man with the caves and she lived next door! The caves were really interesting and much larger than we expected – about 3000 ft. Lots of history and bats! We managed to convince the tour guide to drive us to a restaurant for a small fee. The patrons at Maxs Conch Bar had a chuckle as we disembarked from the Catholic School Bus for lunch. We met another Canadian couple over lunch that were staying at a resort on the north end and had a rental car so after lunch we piled in with them and headed north. We arrived just in time for cruisers happy hour at the restaurant in our bay where we enjoyed meeting other boaters and locals and watching conch racing (no conch were hurt during this event).

   Saturday there was a farmers market happening from 9-12 in Salt Pond so we headed in at 9 looking forward to fresh produce. We arrived there at 920 but were obviously too late as everything was pretty much gone by then so we hiked to the grocery store instead. The rest of our day was pretty laid back on the boat. After lunch Laurie and Francis came over for a visit. Our plan is to head back to Georgetown tomorrow to pick up a part that we are waiting for before heading on to Cat Island.