Powell Cay

We are anchored at Powell Cay.  Across from us is Coopers Town with a real tall cell tower so we actually have a good signal.

We left the marina on Friday and motor-sailed about 13 miles to the anchorage.  Since then we have been busy.  The island is about 1.5 miles long and we have walked both sides of the southern half.  There are no shells left on the beaches.  While going ashore to one of the beaches we suddenly went directly over a wreck in about 12 feet of water.  I swam over with the snorkel gear and dove down on it with the video camera.  The new video will be posted when I get a better signal since the upload takes so long.  The cruisers guide also said there is a trail that takes you to the bluff above the anchorage.  There used to be a trail.  Part way in the trail just quit.  We on the other hand did not.  We thought we could find our way.  We were wrong.  At one point we were about ten feet apart and could not see each other for the thick brush.  We gave up and then had to find the original trail to get back out.   After the hike we took the dinghy to the base of the bluff and I tried snorkeling there.  I found a lot of coral, plants and a lot of small fish.  I saw two lionfish and was able to kill one of them.  Lionfish are an invasive species and will eat everything and drive off the local fish.  We have read that it is proper to kill them whenever you find one.  After that I was able to spear our first lobster.  It was delicious with a bit of drawn butter for dinner.

Today, Sunday, we wanted to explore the bay on the Atlantic side.  One of the books says there is good snorkeling there.  We headed out but the outboard started to act up when we got there so we just pulled it up on shore to walk to another section of beach we had not been to before.  After that it started and ran ok so we headed back to the boat for lunch.  When we got back we found our new friends Ken and Francie on Release.  They are from Vermont and run a maple syrup farm.  We met them at the cruisers breakfast.  I checked out several ideas of why the outboard was acting up and it seemed to be running good again, so off we went to explore the other side of the island and check out another beach there.  As we got there it started to act up again.  We beached it and went exploring, letting it rest.  When we started back it just quit.  Nothing would keep it running, if it would start at all.  This meant paddling all the way around the island to get home.  The good thing about this is we had a lot of time to watch the bottom for conch.  At one point we got into an area with a lot of them but all too small.  We did manage to find two that were of legal size.  As we paddled along Cori got real excited about a shark that was laying there in the shallows.  We circled back and got as close for a picture as we could get before it took off.  As we got closer to the boats, just as the sun was setting, Ken saw that we were paddling and came over to tow us the rest of the way.  After getting cleaned up we cleaned the conch and put them away to be eaten later.  Now we have two shells to try to make into horns.

Tomorrow will be a lazy day of laundry and boat maintenance.  Hopefully I can figure out what is wrong with the outboard.  If that doesn't work we can still use the 3.3 horse Mercury.  It is good to have two outboards on board.