Orange Creek to Conception Island

 We had a lovely 2 mile walk on the beach near Orange Creek and decided to forego exploration of Cat Island and instead, make tracks for Conception Island and San Salvador to take advantage of a possible week of settled weather.

The Orange Creek Beach was beautiful, long and deserted.

After the nice beach walk, we upped the anchor and headed to an anchorage 30 miles away near Hawks Nest on the far side of Cat Island. We figured this would be a good jumping-off point for our 30 mile trip to Conception Island. 

We tried to go ashore but couldn't due to the surge and the total lack of any landable beach. It was only rocks so we gave up on trying to get ashore.

The good news is that this was another Green Flash night. Woo hoo!!!!!

The next morning, en route to Conception Island, we snagged a mighty fish! The reel Jim was using had a line counter so as the fish neared 100 feet from the boat, he dove straight down. Jim wasn't able to slow him down until he reached over 400 feet deep! Then as Jim fought him back to the surface, the fish finally pulled the 80 pound leader apart. Ughhh. This was the first time we had ever seen a fish do that. Bummer!

We love Conception Island. It is a national park and, as such, will never be purchased or settled. The water is crystal clear and the beaches are amazing.

Once anchored, we hiked to an adjoining beach that has beautiful cliffs and views. The trail passes through a variety of flotsam that other cruisers have collected to keep the beaches clean.

The beach in the bay where we anchored Samba is truly awesome. We measured it at around 1.5 miles long and one of the best shelling beaches we've found. Carol found all sorts of treasures here!

Here is a short video of what our anchorage looks like. Be sure you view this at full screen and landscape on your phone!

We left Conception early Thursday morning to make a 40 mile run to San Salvador. It took us an hour just to get past the protective reefs surrounding Conception Island. Once we made the turn to San Salvador, we decided that maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

Seas were running 3' to 4', confused and steep. We turned around and headed back to Conception Island. We decided it just wasn't worth working that hard for 6 hours. Ughhh. 

Once anchored, we headed around the island with the dinghy and explored a mangrove river. We saw a number of turtles, a few rays and even a shark poking around the shallows. Sometimes, we just turn off the engine and drift and listen to the sounds of nature.

While anchored, we had some fish hanging out under the boat. After trying all kinds of lures, Jim finally tried some frozen shrimp and boom, we had fish. 5 small jacks and a nice 19" trigger fish who was quite the fighter!

Carol made fish dip with some of the jacks and we had grilled triggerfish for dinner. It was outstanding! Somewhere between grouper and wahoo!  While Jim was cleaning the fish, Carol made a loaf of bread. Yum!

Our plans change just about as much as the winds change. Once we scrapped our trip to San Salvador, we thought we would head over to Cat Island. Then, after reviewing the longer term weather, we decided to move over to Long Island and use it as a jumping off point to get down to the remote islands of the Jumentos and Raggeds.

The jury is still out. We'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, you can see where we have been and are on the maps tab.