Fowl Cay Preserve

May 6 – 7, 2014      ( PICTURES WILL BE POSTED AT A LATER DATE)

Fishing at Fowl Cay Preserve is prohibited. The grouper swimming around the hard and soft corals seemed to instinctively know there would be no threat of humans yelling, “Fish on!” in their safe watery paradise. We snorkeled some of the reef the day we arrived at Fowl Cay. We anchored White Swan on the sea side of the small island and rode in our dinghy over to the ocean side to the preserve. The ocean was calm and it was a sunny day, which made for a perfect day for snorkeling or scuba diving. Like us, many others were taking advantage of the ideal day to be at Fowl Cay Preserve.

We saw a lot of live coral, which is always a hopeful sight, since coral around the world is diminishing. Numerous kinds of fishes swam around the coral either feeding, gunk holing, or chasing one another. We floated above the scene and watched them in their home. Songs from the animated movie Nemo played in my mind as we enjoyed the underwater playground… “Under the sea, under the sea…”

A school of blue tang gracefully swam by us, which is always an exciting scene to see. I snapped away on our underwater camera hoping for a photo worthy of posting on our blog.

We anchored at the upper end of Man-o-War Cay for the night. There were five other boats anchored in the cove. Occupants from a catamaran went to swim near the shore and in their absence their little dog remained at the bow of their boat and barked endlessly. A neighboring boater went over to the distressed doggie to try to calm it. Upon seeing someone was at the bow of his boat, the owner of the dog zoomed back to his boat in his dinghy and immediately a shouting match occurred between the two men. We thought surely more than words would fly, but thankfully that did not happen. The unwelcome man from the other boat returned to his own domain and the yippie dog was placed inside the catamaran, where his muffled cries for his family became less annoying to the surrounding community of boaters.

The next day at ebb tide, we motored White Swan out Man-O-War Channel and delicately maneuvered through the reefs and anchored near them in a sandy spot. Caring boaters never anchor where there might be damage to the reefs. Some coral take a year to grow just one inch. Gary and I value the coral too much to deliberately put it in harms way.

We snorkeled a vast amount of reefs during our five hours stay in Fowl Cay Preserve. I saw one turtle but by the time I got Gary’s attention she was nowhere to be found. A school of small pompano followed us around. We wondered if maybe they were used to being fed by human visitors. We saw another school of the stunning blue tang fishes.

We snorkeled, went to White Swan and ate a snack, snorkeled some more and then ate lunch, and then snorkeled some more before calling it a fabulous day on the reef.

Instead of going back to the anchorage where the two men had their altercation the night before, we tucked into another lovely cove, not far from the upper end of Man-O-War. A quiet evening ended with yet another beautiful sunset.