It was calm with some light winds from the North which made us feel a little closer to the beach but our anchor had been fine all night so we decided to go exploring. We planned to dinghy to the Santa Maria resort and then walk to the Columbus monument, marking the third place Christopher Columbus landed in the “new world” in 1492.
We left Fat Tuesday on the beach at the near end of the resort and took a path to the road. The area with the resort is called Galliot Cay . It is separated from Long Island by a large lagoon called Joe’s Sound on the west side and Hoosie Harbour to the north. Both of these areas are shallow with some deeper channels. They are good habitat for turtles and bonefish. We thought about taking the dinghy into Hoosie Harbour but we were not sure about the low tide depths there.
We started our walk on the resort road to the main road. We were not very far when a car approached us, Eddie’s taxi, driven by Selena. She offered us a ride to the monument. Apparently, we could have rented bikes at the resort. Good information.
She had to go to the airport but had time to drop us at the monument and told us to call her on our way back. We went over a small very narrow bridge connecting Galliot to the main Long Island. Selena said you could stand next to the bridge and watch turtles and bonefish go by.
She dropped us at the monument and we were the only people there. She told us about a little beach we could go to for swimming and shelling. The views from the monument were beautiful. The inscription was interesting, a dedication to “the gentle, peaceful and happy” Lucayan people and to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in October 1492. Amazing that they arrived during hurricane season. One big storm…
After the monument , we took a path to the lagoon on the other side. It was quite a long trail . We worried about missing the turn to the lagoon but there were signs.
It was an amazing place probably best explored by kayak or drone.There were some deep rivers running through it and it was too large to walk around. We saw some rays but the turtles were hiding.
David noticed that the wind picked up a bit which was not predicted and wanted to head back and check on the boat. We started walking out and Selena picked us up about halfway back. We dinghied back to the boat to check things.
David checked the weather and our best model had changed drastically but all the others continued to call for light winds. It turns out, there was a glitch in the app and the model was completely bonkers. It was one of those moments when our common sense went out the window when we were looking at erroneous data from a source we usually trust.
Once we got that figured out, we decided to check out the resort and have some lunch. The place was beautiful and they had all of my favorite toys. We saw a woman paddle boarding. They had kayaks and hobie cats. They also offered many excursions and fishing trips for extra cost.
After lunch, we returned to the boat. I swam to the beach and walked to the south end. We decided to spend the night at Calabash even though it is a little rolly. Tomorrow the wind is not right to go to Cat Island so we will head back to Georgetown.