Good morning

Another wonderful sunrise, time to leave this fishing town for the peace and quiet of Conception Island . We have only 48 miles so not a long cruising day. Conception Island is an islet, it is 2,100 acres and uninhabited land. It is an important rookery for nesting seabirds and hatching site for green turtles. The Island is protected as a Bahamas National Land and Sea Park.

We started out heading North just off shore of Long Island and it became very clear that the Atlantic Ocean had other plans for us today the winds were stronger than anticipated and so were the swells, so made us reconsider our plans to make it over to Conception Island. We would have made it over just fine but the trip the next day to Emerald Bay on the Great Exuma Island would be really rocky with swells double in size based on our last weather report, so we decided to go to Calabash Bay which is in Stella Maris North end of Long Island.  

We arrived at 1 PM and set anchor. A very nice bay with gorgeous sandy beaches protected by a few reefs. Our first order of business was to mark the anchor line with colors indicating every 25ft a chore that the skipper has been waiting to do . Then a quick lunch and a dingy adventure, I have to say we are getting much better at launching this dinghy of ours. We went in search for a good snorkel spot laid the dingy anchor and hopped in. The snorkeling here was sort of underwhelming a few fish not much coral mostly just grassy rocks, we did see Mr. Barracuda he was HUGE the biggest one i've ever seen, at first I thought he was a shark but Bryan said no just a big barracuda really freaky so miss Heather decided I'd seen enough hehe. I'm getting much faster at getting into the dinghy from the water :-) I downloaded a picture to add to the post for you to see what they look like...the one we saw was fatter and over 4 ft long.

From there we zipped around the shore line to see the lovely resort Villas of Stella Maris Resort has rooms and cottages to rent they offer all inclusive packages as well. 4 bedroom cottage with a pool is approximately $3000 at this time of the year so not bad pricing.

We walked along the beach the beaches here are so amazing very fine white sand just beautiful, I snorkeled back to the boat trying to look for more sea life but no such luck. I assisted the skipper with cleaning some gunk from the side of the boat that was fun we were in the dingy and I held the dingy close to the boat whilst Bryan did the cleaning sounds easy but not really when you are the side of the boat kneeling on the edge of the dingy holding boat rail which above your head I'm so surprised I didn't fall in hehe.

We sat outside and watched a stunning sunset then I cooked a very tasty meal of fresh fish and salad, the fisherman at Flying Fish Marina are so generous to give away filets very delicious.

A great day