October 31st

We woke to another day of clear, glassy water. Scott says its like boating in your friend’s infinity pool. With today being much calmer than yesterday, we can see the bottom very clearly. This video was taken in 20 feet of water!

Not your neighbor’s infinity pool (of course we wouldn’t really know for sure, having never been in an infinity pool)!!

Scott spent most of the day walking back and forth, staring in the water and remarking how calm it was and how he could still see the bottom. When he wasn’t walking back and forth, he spent time sitting out on the pulpit (his new favorite viewing spot).

We have had two fishing rods out each day, testing our luck. Late in the morning, we heard the whir of something on the line. Scott started to reel it in, and there was definitely resistance on the line…yay!…dinner! Alas, it was a barracuda. A big barracuda. Unfortunately, we weren’t going to take a chance on eating it. Barracuda usually carry a large amount of ciguatera, a toxin found in fish that feed along coral reefs. The fish cannot rid themselves of the toxin, and it accumulates gradually in the fish with age. It was a big guy. The lure in this video is nine inches!

So…we didn’t want to eat it, but also didn’t want to cut the line and lose our lure (not having an arsenal of these things). Scott did not want to get close to that mouth, so he used several long handled tools to get it off of the hook. It was quite a fight, as the thing was nasty and mad, but he came away with the lure! We called it a day, and brought the poles in.

We noticed that our little castaway birds were still with us, and later in the afternoon our stowaway numbers grew. A seagull decided to take a break and perch himself at the end of our paravane. Soon enough, there were five of them fighting for space. I roused Howard up from his travel sleep, and showed him what was going on. It was quite the sensory overload, and I was worried he might have a stroke. He settled into the port side pilot house window, to take it all in.

It became quite a loud, shrieking show, but the gulls finally left as we approached land. However, Howard started to look at the roof of the pilot house, thinking that they must have settled up there. God knows what will ensue when he goes out once we anchor. He’s likely to spend the rest of the night searching for them.

It was an enjoyable and eventful eight hour day, and we are now anchored in Bullock Harbour, off of Great Harbour Cay.

We plan to spend a few days here. Scott wants to snorkel near a submerged plane wreckage, and jump into a blue hole; both are right near us. There is a beach on the east side of the island that we want to check out, as well as a beach bar or two. Plenty to keep us occupied!

Catch of the day: Barracuda!

Here are photos from today’s journey. By the way…Happy Halloween!

“Shells Sink, Dreams Float. Life’s Good On Our Boat!”