More beautiful beaches

On Friday, March 13, we sailed to another harbor on Cat Island, Bennett Bay. It’s a small settlement, very poor with the exception of a few foreigners who have homes there, mostly summer only. There is one very cute, 4 cottage resort, Sammy T’s. Very nicely done. Here is the entrance, from the beach.
And the view from the porch.
And lunch on the porch.
Complete with the obligatory thatched beach umbrellas.
The small village itself is very poor. One family has a “restaurant/bar” where they sell fresh conch salad. Take a look at this guy, sitting in the sun… we passed.
BUT we were told later that it’s quite ok. Conch are designed by Mother Nature to sit on the sand flats for 12 hours each day, baking in the sun, waiting for the tidal shift. The locals gather them, bore a hole through the shell, tie 5 of them together, and take them home to wait to sell. If they don’t sell them that day, they put them back into the water at high tide, still tied together, and they stay there until the next day when it all starts all over again. I’m TOLD that if you tie 3 conch together, they can figure out how to swim away. But 5 can’t coordinate it and can’t swim away….

There are many churches on the island, some simply deserted. This one is an old Catholic church, simply abandoned.
The inside is falling apart but not vandalized. That is something we’ve noticed in all of the Bahamas. No real evidence of vandalized property, no graffiti.
The church was apparently last used around Easter, 1992. There is still a bible and hymnal sitting on the pulpit, open to an Easter selection, with a program
We went with 3 other boats and took our dinghys up the Alligator River. The water is so crystal clear. Look at this…
Looks like a shore drop off and then water, right? Nope, there is at least a foot of water over that sandy mangrove area. There IS a drop off, about 10 feet deep. Here is a better view of what is looks like, with the water over the mangrove knees.
Next, a short sail to Little San Salvador. I caught a fish en route! A small jack.
Luke filleted him, and although it looks like very little, we got 4 nice fillets out of it. We invited another boat over for dinner and they brought some ham to supplement it. The fish was very good!
Unfortunately, I’ve lost 3 more, unable to reel them in. The line breaks at the reel tip. And the reel doesn’t work right. When we hit civilization, we’re getting a new reel with higher strength line.
Little San Salvador is an island that a cruise line owns. We can anchor there, but are not supposed to go ashore. Here are 2 of the boats. That’s our friends Dee and Dave’s sailboat for comparison (and it’s a big 47 ft sailboat, not some little guy).
Part of the activities on the island is horse riding. They came back by, horses up to their body in the water.
One big excitement, we "saw" a space shuttle take off - from about 350 miles away! It was just after sun set, about 7:45, and the sun illuminated the smoke trail from the solid rocket boosters. It was just a red line angling into the sky on the horizon. A few minutes later, there was a bright cloud in the dark sky, higher, in the same direction. It persisted for at least 10 minutes. We later heard several theories: a cloud of ionized gasses from the hydrogen rocket exhaust, giving off light, or a cloud of ice crystals from the exhaust, illuminated by the sun, already below the horizon for lower level clouds. We sort of caught that, but not very well. It was exciting though! Proud to be an American ---
Next to Rock Sound, a very cute settlement with colorful houses, a real grocery store, cheap liquor store, someone who did my laundry for me at a very cheap price, and of course, the usual lunch bar.
We left Rock Sound on St Patty’s day, headed north along the Elutherias for Governor’s Harbor. Unfortunately, our friends Dee and Dave headed south, to meet friends. We’ll miss traveling with them; it was a lot of fun. But, we’ll see them back in the States, as we head north up the ICW.
We spent Wednesday, March 18, in Government Harbour, the original capital of the Bahamas. Many Loyalist came here after the American Revolution. I guess they were the original ex-patriots…Their houses are still standing, all with beautiful views. They are all in complete disrepair, some just left, some used for storage of either garbage or junk.
The island itself is the most prosperous that we’ve seen. There are about a dozen beautiful homes, nice gardens, etc. Definitely foreigners