A Paridise Within Paradise

We made our escape from Elizabeth Harbour (Georgetown) last Friday in the early morning light. The 40-mile sail over to Conception was fabulous with a brisk south/east wind moving us towards this magnificent paradise.

The beauty of this uninhabited island comes from its crystalline water, magnificent crescent beaches, and abundant sea life. In fact, from the boat we saw a puffer fish, a dolphin and a shark. (The sharks don't scare us anymore and we went in swimming several times to cool off from the heat of the day.) This island also offers miles of creeks to poke around inland that are home to hundreds of sea turtles.

The wind was calm and the sea was flat while we were in Conception except for two hours when a front came through, which was about as much fun as a root canal, but other than that it was very enjoyable. We would have loved to stay longer, however, Conception Island has no safe and secure harbours for protection form every direction, and given that the wind is to switch around in the next day or two we headed to Cat Island today.

The sail over was epic with large gentle waves and great wind. I must say that Blue Blazes out-performed herself as she averaged 7.2 knots over the 28-mile trek from Conception to the way point at the tip of Cat Island. We even, at one point, saw 9.8 on the knot meter as we were surfing down a wave...hee haw!

As we turned the corner towards The Bight the water depth went from 6,000 feet to 20 feet in about 50 yards. It was very cool and maybe even a bit eerie. It was then that Harley asked me to reel in the fishing line, which (by the way) we always drag but with little success. Usually Harley does this job but he had his hands full at the helm as the wind had picked up and we were close hulled.

So there I am reeling in the line and don't I get a fish on. I call to Harley that I have a fish and he tells me to reel it in. At this point I'm thinking he must be crazy as I know nothing about fishing, but I reel it in. Thankfully it wasn't very big and believe it or not I even got the hook out myself and released it without hurting the poor little guy. I had to look it up on my trusty little Fishwatcher's Field Guide and found that I let a Yellowtail Snapper live for another day. I guess we could have eaten him but I felt he was too little and cute to kill.