Spanish Wells to Royal Island | 1.3 Hours | 7.1 Miles
It is always difficult to leave Spanish Wells. Everything about the island makes me want to visit again and stay much longer. The morning was beautifully sunny and calm, but there was absolutely no breeze. The still air allowed the mosquitoes and no see ums to find me, but also created perfect reflections on the water. We were not in a hurry to depart and watched several other boats leave before us. The Concession, another 53-foot Selene, was the first to drop their dock lines and head out the channel. At 9:30 Treadwell tossed us our lines, we waved goodbye, and effortlessly exited the slip, pulling up along the fishing boat New Wave before making a u-turn. I was in the cockpit watching as we passed alongside more fishing boats and putting away the dock lines when our engine suddenly stopped. We were dead in the water. It didn't take long to figure out what had caused the shutdown. The issue was we needed to get to a dock. Thankfully, a local fishing boat pulled alongside, and nudged us over close enough for Treadwell to catch our docklines and get us secured once more. Barry went under the floor, opened a valve, bled some air from the injectors, and finally got us restarted. We repeated the departure sequence and were on our way ... again, thankful to have come through that storm without delay or damage.
We exited the channel and spotted large rain showers to the east and south. We had a short trip -- barely a mile -- to reach our destination. The clouds were still off at a distance when we anchored so we lowered the dinghy and set off to explore.
We circled around the western tip of Royal Island. The large sandbar was easy to spot in the distance as it was nearing low tide. We beached the dinghy and set the anchor. On cue five large rays made their way over to us in water no more than a foot deep. I put on my mask and snorkel and followed them around. The rays are so graceful and hover just over the sand. My difficulty today was that they were often too close for a good photo.
Multiple tour operators bring dozens of visitors here to pet the rays. Their smooth and soft skin had visible scratches from all of this human attention. I found their eyes fascinating.
I put the underwater camera in the dinghy and then walked out to meet Barry on the sandbar. The dark clouds were still threatening on the horizon. We walked the entire perimeter in the warm shallow water. There were no shells or sea grass on bar. The soft, clean sand was covered only in ridges and valleys left by the wave action of the receding water.
I couldn't leave the sandbar without a visit to the swing. The sky to the west was much more benign. We hopped back in the dinghy and crossed to the eastern end of the island. As we moved over the shallow water and looked down, we began to see many coral heads and large starfish on the grassy bottom. Once the grass changed to sand, Barry stopped the dinghy and I hopped in to take a closer look. Without another object to get a relative size, it was difficulty to show the size of these big stars. I quickly brought one up for Barry to get a closer look then softly returned it to its sandy home.
While I was in the water with the starfish, it began to rain. We abandoned our search for turtles and will have to put them high on our list for next year. As we passed by the swing on our way out, three large tour boats had unloaded dozens of visitors. The rays were getting plenty of attention. We had lucked out and arrived early and in time to have the place to ourselves. Back on the south side of the island, the wind had picked up and so had the wave action. It was a bumpy ride back to Crossroads and we raised the dinghy up before conditions turned worse. The early evening was a little sporty as the clouds moved through the area. It is difficult to capture photos of wave action, but watching the neighboring sailboat pitch makes the point. Crossroads is much heavier than the sailboat and handles the waves without that extreme motion. Squally conditions have persisted into the late evening, with thunder and lightning over Russell Island. All of this storm activity should be gone in the morning when we leave at first light heading to Great Harbour in the Berry Islands. It will be the longest trip we've made in many weeks, but will put us in position to hop back to Charleston (or beyond) with the arrival of the next weather window.
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