Swimming with the Turtles

When we were telling friends about what we were going to do on our sailing adventure, I mentioned that we would send pictures of us swimming with the turtles. While we were in the Tobago Cays we did just that. Unfortunately our waterproof camera has quit working – for the second time – so the picture of the turtle is one Griff took of one swimming beside our boat. You will just have to take our word that we did swim with the turtles. It was neat watching them ‘graze’ on the grass on the sea bottom and then come to the surface every once in a while to breathe. They are very graceful when swimming. I was surprised to see that when swimming they only use their back flippers as rudders and propel themselves with the front flippers.

The day we snorkeled around Turtle Island we also saw a couple of other interesting things. One was a spotted trunk fish attacking a starfish. It would nip at the tip of one of the starfish’s arms and then back off. The starfish would move away, but the trunkfish would grab it by the arm again and drag it back to its original feeding spot. Griff said he was tempted to dive down and rescue the starfish, but then realized that what we were seeing was nature in action. The other thing we saw was a fish that looked like a file fish sitting on a lobster. That is it had all these things sticking out from its sides. When it started swimming away all the things were smoothed against its sides and it was very streamlined. We later found out that it was a lionfish and extremely poisonous. It was beautiful though.

The Tobago Cays are a cluster of five uninhabited islands protected from the sea by the Horseshoe Reef. They appear as classic, deserted tropical islands – white sand beaches, palm trees and water that is a kaleidoscope of greens, blues and aquamarine. The Cays are a popular anchorage for cruisers, charters and day tour boats as evidenced by the 50+ boats that were there when we were.

Out in this tropical paradise you would think that you would be away from the touristy things found on other islands. Not so!! Boat boys come out daily selling everything from bread to t-shirts to fresh fish. We bought banana bread from Walter whom we had met last year. And Griff bought a t-shirt from Sydney who was an interesting character with his unique form of dress and his boat Sir Prises. We spent an enjoyable couple of days snorkeling and cleaning the dinghy bottom before we headed onward.

Our next stop was at Mayreau, a small island we missed visiting last year. Mayreau is only 1.5 square miles and has a population of 250. It too appears as an ideal tropical island. There is only one hotel and two guesthouses on the island so most of the tourism is supported by the cruisers and charter boats that stop in its two anchorages. We anchored in Salt Whistle Bay which was a tiny bay, but one day there were 18 boats anchored. We walked the length of the island to see what there was there. Spring must be the time for goats to have kids just like sheep have lambs because there were a lot of baby goats all over the island. Griff helped one goat that had tangled itself in a bush and then went around in circles so often the rope was twisting back on itself and was close to choking the goat. We saw a little boy, maybe 7 years old, who was leading a goat and trying to tie it to a tree. Griff helped him. However, shortly a woman came and untied the rope and let the goat free so it could cross the road to where its kid was. Both the goat and the kid were ‘bawling’ noisily. The rest of our time here was spent lazing on the boat and swimming in the clear water.

The day we were planning on leaving we were debating about when to leave since we were only 4 nm from our next stop, Union Island. We had decided to leave later in the day when we noticed a fishing boat being rowed through the anchorage. It had a large pile of fishnets and 7 fishermen in it. As well there were two other boats beside it. To us it looked as though they were going to set out their nets, possibly across the mouth of the bay. We then decided we should leave before that happened and set out for Union Island about 0900 instead of later. Stay tuned! We’ll tell you about that in our next blog.