TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

The winds were really kicking up and we needed to keep moving North and decided to go to Normans Cay for a couple of days, again since Chad and not Galit and I visited it on the way down.  We were going to anchor in the cut below Normans Cay, but when we sailed by there, there was nobody at all anchored there.  Everyone, maybe 6-7 boats, were anchored off Skipjack point off the beach on the West side of the island.  Odd, because last time I was here, there were at least 20 boats anchored in the cut.  We thought this meant something and decided to go with the majority rule and we went and anchored with the rest of the sheep.  We went to the Beach Club and had cocktails and snacks.  Galit thought it was the nicest bar that she’d seen in the Exumas.  We chatted with locals and learned about some of the difficult issues involved in trying to build a house on the island, with it being so remote.  The next day, we thought we would be bold and go anchor in the cut, which turned out to be just fine and to our chagrin lured 6 other boats to join us.  The cut provides a very large amount of room for anchoring and everyone was spread out respectfully, but for some reason this catamaran came and anchored no more than 50 feet away from us.  Our searing stares did nothing but seem to pit the captain against his one of his guests who seemed to be arguing over being too close.  Finally, after Galit nixed my plan to blare Black Sabbath like the US Military did against Noriega, we decided to say something, like come on there’s all this room so why don’t you just move up 100 feet at least?  They had turned their radio off apparently because they were not responding to hails.  Instead of yelling across the water, which would have worked, we motored over and I asked if they could move so we each could have some more privacy; there was plenty of room.  The captain looked nervously and said they were not staying the night and were leaving soon.  Later they actually weighed anchor and moved and then let out so much scope that they were even closer than before.  Arguing ensued on board, what may have been a charter boat, and again amidst our puzzled stares, they weighed anchor and sailed away.  Oh well, Galit and I spent the next day buzzing about in Lil Vill into the pond, to caves, cuts, and snorkel sites, including the downed DC-9.