24th to 25th April 2021
After a slightly rougher than ideal sail for our first attempt at navigating between coral heads, we anchored fairly close in to Gibbs Cay in a sandy patch (there’s a lot of seagrass in the area). We took the entrance through Big Cut, and a fairly straight approach into Gibbs Cay from there was easy enough.
We spent the afternoon on the beach looking out for stingrays, which apparently come here regularly while the tour boats are in operation- it is known as ‘Stingray City’. There were none around, so we explored the island a little bit further walking over to the Atlantic side and seeing the waves crashing on the shore. We picked up a couple of floats which had been washed up on the beach.
As you can see from the photos, when we got back to the beach, we found a couple of Stingrays fairly quickly. They were completely unafraid of people, which I guess is not a surprise given that the tour boats apparently feed them. Arthur enjoyed stroking the Stingrays and following them around for a few minutes and Charlotte floated over the top of them for maybe half an hour.
The next morning Charlotte and the kids returned to the beach while I did some work. They found a section of net and some more floats that the kids are going to craft into a squid net, apparently. They got to see the Stingrays again, and Theo got more out of it this time around. He is getting the hang of snorkeling rather than just wearing a mask and dipping below the surface, so can spend a bit longer in the water than previously.
We moved on more quickly than we would like because the weather was forecast to get heavier over the next week. And we wanted to see Salt Cay. In retrospect we might have been better enjoying some of the shallow coral and seagrass here for another couple of days and saving the children an extra sail.
