Stats for February 23, 2019

Origin: Big Farmer Cay

Destination: Rudder Cut Cay

Distance: 7.6 miles

Speed: 6.7 mph

Time on the Move: 1 hour and 7 minutes

In the morning, before we left our anchorage at Big Farmer Cay, George from Livin the Dream took everyone for a spin on their famous ZUP board, where you can lay on your belly, kneeboard, or even stand up like wake boarding. It is very kid friendly, and everyone had fun!! Thanks for all the fun Zeeffs!!

After everyone had ZUP board fun, we all packed up and headed south to Rudder Cut Cay. Rudder Cut Cay is well-known because it is one of David Copperfield’s group of 11 private islands in the south end of the Exuma chain. He rents out his island paradise on nearby Musha Cay for $39,000 a night for a minimum of 4 nights. It looks pretty amazing, and there were people playing there as we passed by, so someone must be able to afford that price tag! See more details at mushacay.com if you’re interested.

The area is popular among cruisers because of the beautiful colors of water, a sunken sculpture that many people enjoy snorkeling, and a 3 mile long sandbar nearby.

Our first stop was the beach at Rudder Cut Cay. Technically this is a private island and there are “No Trespassing” signs along the beach, but everything in the Bahamas is public land up to the high tide line. We told the kiddos to stay on the beach rather than exploring in the bushes. No one lives on the island and there are no buildings that I know of, so there was no one there to bother us.

After some play time, the INNTW crew headed to the mermaid and piano sculpture sunk off the south side of Rudder Cut Cay. Apparently, David Copperfield commissioned this sculpture and sunk it here to give his guests something else to do while visiting his island. It is made of mirrors, but sediment and algae covered the surfaces. There wasn’t much sea life around her, but it was still a pretty mystical sight underwater. Someone commented that kids probably think magical things like mermaids playing the piano happen under the ocean surface all the time! I love perpetuating the creative thinking and belief that anything is possible!

Heading back to the dinghy, we saw some sand bars just a bit past our boat, and I trumped the majority vote to head back to the boat, so we headed right to the shallow water at the north end of Rudder Cut Cay. There was a large area of ankle deep water we had to shuffle through to get to this dry stuff, but wow, was it worth it!! I just love a good sandbar!! Enjoy (or excuse the millions of pictures!!).

The next morning, we made plans to dinghy to Darby Island to explore an old mansion and plantation that was once owned by a suspected Nazi sympathizer. During World War II the island was owned by Sir Guy Baxter who received the land as a gift from the King George of England for his knighthood and later built a successful plantation and huge castle (1938). During World War II people reported seeing weird flashing lights coming from the castle, which was supposedly guiding German U-boats to the island and it’s caves for repair and reprovisioning. Workers at the plantation also reported seeing an intricate radio and telegraph station set up in the house, and huge cement piles still remain in the outside channel to this day. No one quite knows what happened to Baxter, though some say the Bahamians realized what was going on and seized the property. The castle has been abandoned for over 60 years and the whole island is now for sale for $39,000,000. What a deal!

We moved around to the north side of the island where we could beach the dinghy, and hoped to walk up the overgrown and long-abandoned air strip. Just the walk to the air strip was quite thick with brush, and the air strip didn’t look any better. We abandoned our plans after using satellite images to see that we were about 1/5 of the way to the castle after a very difficult trek through the bushes and trees. It was hard enough on me, but I’m sure all that brush was really difficult for little legs to climb over!

On the air strip we did get to see remnants of an airplane crash, including this prop and the crumpled remains of the body of the plane. No swastika on it, though…we looked!! Search “green castle on Darby Island” if you want to read more. I was super bummed we couldn’t get there!

Instead, we found ourselves a nice deserted island to play on. The boys worked on a stone floor for a fort they built and found a scorpion in the process. The girls took their baby dolls down the beach to play (surprise!!). Tobin found a balloon with a note that he was excited about until we realized it was in Portuguese. I guess that note remains a mystery!

After lunch, Mike and George took off to try their luck spearfishing. It was quiet reading time for the kids and quiet reading time for mom! Perfection!

The guys were gone about 3 hours, but Mike was super excited to bring home another lobster!! I got the report that currents make swimming really tough and exhausting, everything looks WAY bigger underwater, and barracudas are super creepy because they just follow you around waiting for you to spear their dinner.

After the great fisherman relaxed a bit, we took off to find the famous 2 mile long sandbar that is around here somewhere. We have looked for it in several places, several times, but today we found it. Unfortunately, low tide wasn’t until sunset, so we didn’t get to enjoy it long, but it was everything I hoped for!!

We had to dinghy a long way–maybe 3 miles or so–out into the Banks. It looked like we were headed to absolutely nowhere. Which was pretty accurate. After we could see the sandbar in the distance, we had to walk through shallows for quite some time before we got to dry land. Like a 10 minute walk.

We did end up running hard aground into the sand on our way back. I was trying to navigate for Mike and hold the light, and then we got distracted by the giant outdoor movie screen set up for the guests on Musha. It wasn’t hard to push us out of the sand and in to deeper water. I’m sure we aren’t the first boat to run aground around here!!

We enjoyed Mike’s fresh lobster catch and a leftover guy for dinner. The kids had mac-n-cheese with a few bites of lobster. The perfect end to another day in paradise!!

Thank you for reading and following along on our adventures!! I don’t know if it is David Copperfield or mermaids or sandbars or what, but this stop was indeed magical!!