Nurse Sharks Aplenty

Borrowed from: marinas.com

The Wednesday after Mother’s Day showed up on the weather websites as our last day of decent wind for at least a week, so we reluctantly left the Island School area to get to our next port of call: Highbourne Cay at the northern part of the Exumas.  We left at the break of dawn and experienced what I see as our most perfect sailing day to date!  The winds were blowing steady at a speed that was high enough to get us where we were heading, but low enough to stay safe (for you sailor-types, we had a good beam reach of 12-16 knot wind all day coming from our port side) and coming from the perfect direction to push us oh-so-gently to our northwestern destination (if only every day could be so easy!).  As we were making yet another sizable jump (32 miles) to enter into an unknown area with sharp rock edges and coral heads around, we were happy to make the journey quickly enough to have us drinking a glass of wine with the anchor down and the sails stowed by 5:00 in the evening!

Just one at first...

While getting the sails put away, we saw a mighty large, dark figure swimming toward and then under the boat: a shark!  This was the first we had seen and we were intrigued to see it so close to the boat; we also told the cats very sternly that they were not to go swimming in this area.  (This, of course, was an order they had no problem obeying.)  After a glass of wine, we decided to explore the area we were in and figure out where the coral heads were so we’d know where to go snorkeling the next day.  After some exploration of the beautiful, crystal clear waters around us, we headed into the marina we were anchored outside of, which was full of 75-100 foot motor yachts and 40-foot fishing boats.  As we entered the marina, we saw a couple of dorsal fins poking up through the water and realized that they were circling!  As we got closer, we recognized that a fish cleaning station was sticking off the end of the rock retaining wall and some men were cleaning their day’s catch, bringing in around 30 nurse sharks for the scraps.  We took our dinghy as close as we could without risking hitting a shark with our propeller and realized that, in addition to the army of sharks, there were also two rather large manta rays hanging around waiting for leftovers.  One of the funniest moments for me was appreciating that – quite frequently – the sharks were beat to the eating punch by seagulls swooping down and stealing the morsels of fish being haphazardly thrown for the fastest animal.  This was definitely better entertainment than sitting in front of a TV!

Borrowed from:http://www.blog.wildquest.com/terris-off-season-adventures

The next day brought the finishing of laundry, a process that had started a couple of days before but had been side tracked due to traveling and – let’s be honest – a wee bit of laziness.  As much as I hate doing laundry by hand, it has now become a process made harder by the need to make sure all of the salt water is completely wrung out before the clothes go into their fresh water rinse.  As my wonderful, lovely, awesome husband loves to wear blue jeans and pants, the wringing process takes its toll on my hands; now, the Captain is just as willing as I am to get his hands wet and get our clothes clean, but at the time he was nursing a mighty blister on his hand that was made worse when soaked in water, so this scrubbing go-around was all on me.  The Captain did what he could, though, helping to wring out and hang the clothes around the boat on the lifeline (definition 4).  I laugh to think about what our neighbors on the other side of the retaining wall must have thought about paying $2 per foot per night (remember, some of these brand new yachts were easily 80+ feet) for their time in the Bahamas, only to look out and see this 36-year-old sailboat with laundry hanging around the entire deck!  As we were told by the family on What If, though: it doesn’t matter how big or fancy the boat is, we all get the same scenery and to be in the same place!

My reward for finishing the laundry was to go snorkeling, including my new favorite way to snorkel: the Captain throws me a long rope while I’m in the water, then he drives the dinghy with me in tow.  It’s a slower, more underwater version of water skiing where I get to see the beautiful colors of the surrounding coral and I get to figure out where the sea life is teeming!  And, here in the Exumas, I finally got to see that teeming sea life: parrotfish, angelfish, and just an assortment of different colors, sizes, and shapes of fish…  I really wish I could name them all, but after so long of not really seeing anything but starfish and sand-colored fish, I’m just happy to see SO much color and variety in the fish!

As much as I loved the coral and the fish, the fun was just getting started!  Because I had seen where the fish were, the Captain decided to try his luck with a fishing pole, giving me the opportunity to do my part of the boat maintenance: scrubbing the bottom of the boat to remove the green seaweed that begins to grow rather quickly around here.  In the back of my mind, I kept hearing his words about nurse sharks: “They’re bottom feeders and scavengers; they won’t hurt you unless you are already bleeding.”  I also had it in my head that I need to do more research about the kind of ray that killed Steve Irwin because there are huge manta rays swimming under my boat.  Again, it’s the conversation with the Captain which eased my mind: Steve Irwin made his living poking animals to the point of becoming synonymous with “pissed off animals” whereas I am happy to just let them be and watch them from a distance in their home. 

That is, until, I came around the back end of the boat and saw four large nurse sharks sitting on the ocean bottom not even 100 feet away from me.  Now, there is no amount of self-soothing that completely eases the fear ingrained in a child of the ‘80s regarding sharks; the movie “Jaws” has become our generation’s idea of what “shark” tells your brain!  As I tried to calm myself enough to finish the last few feet of cleaning, trying desperately to reassure myself that – at the very least – the sharks were a good distance away from me, one swam about 20 feet in front of me heading to the fish cleaning station…  Meaning he was hungry.

Hard to see, but the little baby shark is there!

Self-soothing be damned!  I swam over to the ladder and was sitting on the deck of the boat faster than I could have jumped into the water in most cases!  I was able to breathe and calm myself down, then even convinced myself that I could get in and finish the job I had started.  When I realized that the Captain was on his way back to the boat, that’s exactly what I did; for some reason, having him on the dinghy standing guard over me gave me the confidence to finish the last few feet of cleaning.  I even had enough confidence to swim over to see a lone shark that was sleeping on the sea floor about 100 feet from the boat, though she was only in about 15 feet of water.  Looking down on her was awesome as I got to finally make out what the fish-like hitchhikers I had been seeing on the backs of many of the sharks were: tiny baby sharks!  Again, knowing that the Captain was right there helped me to be brave and even dive down a couple of feet for a closer look – not too close, though: I’m brave (after a while and with a lookout), not an idiot!

At the end of the day, the Captain and I decided we would walk around the island the next day and head out after we had lunch for a shorter jump down the Exumas.  As much as I would love to tell the tale in this blog, that is definitely a story for the next entry because – as so many of them are – it was quite the adventure!  So, y’all come back now, ya hear?!