Thursday Jan 12, 2023 Lee Stocking Island to Rocky Point

 

Another perfect weather day. This morning Erick made an egg frittata with ham and mushrooms for breakfast and endless cups of coffee for the old man (Milo). We took the dinghy up the shore a little ways to a secluded beach where a hiking trail begins. Lee Stocking Island was home to the NOAA Caribbean Marine Research Center from the 1960’s to 2011. It was originally purchased by a man named John Perry to start doing marine research. He paid $70K (795K in 2023 dollars). At some point he got NOAA involved and they built an entire compound. All the buildings are in rough shape having been abandoned in 2011. But someone is working on them as there was a big backhoe, a big truck, a lift truck and some kind of trailer used to burn stuff (never seen one of those before but it makes sense with all the vegetation to clear). There were what looked like personnel quarters, office buildings, a building with still intact aquariums, a chemical lab building with sulfuric acid bottles laying around (empty I hope), and large concrete ponds where I assume they raised stuff. There was  even an old wind turbine laying on the ground with the gin pole still attached, so they must have augmented their generators with wind. There was an airplane landing strip with beat up tarmack and some the the roads had tarmac here and there. We hiked 4 miles or so all over so it was a good survey trip. Back to the boat.

Today’s task was to motor over and around a bunch of cays through pretty shallow water. Surprise has a draft of 4 feet so she was made for the Bahamas and all the shallow water. We didn’t see many boats all day since I suppose most boaters stay away from the shallow stuff. We spent the afternoon poking through the shallow sandbars with Hannah standing on the bow pointing left and right as the water color showed the relative depth. The GPS maps and the big map book they use was last surveyed 5 years ago so the sand bars change year to year depending on storms. It was also close to high tide (about 3 feet), so that gave us an extra buffer and the shallowest water we saw was about 6.5 ft.

We got to Rocky Point in 9 ft of water and there was absolutely nobody else here. Hannah made an amazing sourdough bread braided with spinach, cheeses, and artichoke hearts for late lunch/early dinner, almost too pretty to eat.

We dropped the dinghy and Hannah put together one of the Oru origami kayaks and she circled Rocky Point in one direction, while the other three of us circled in the other direction looking for supper (aka lobsters). Water

temperature perfect (like everywhere) so we spent a long time in the water. Water was a little milky due to the fine silt here, but still enough to see that there were few hiding places for the lobster. We did see a couple of lion fish and Erick saw one small lobster, so crackers and milk (or more mahi mahi, or conch or ??) for supper.

We met Hannah and lashed the kayak to the side of the dinghy and headed back to the boat. Erick and Milo went back out to look for lobster and came home empty handed but had a nice long extra snorkel. The sun was just setting when we headed back to the boat.

Shower (hot water every time we move the boat) and clean clothes then evening cocktails and a charcouterie plate for dinner. Nice night catching up and later on we cracked open the old family movies and pictures that Milo put together for Hannah and Jake as Christmas presents.

We closed things up in case of some rain tonight and slept like kings.