SailThreeSheets.com

Hoffman’s Cay/Devil’s Cay was a beautiful, although very rolly anchorage.  We had come in and tucked in somewhat behid Fowl Cay to get some additional protection from the winds and the surge coming off of the “Tongue of the Ocean” - the waterway we’d entered into the harbor from.  Unlike Bimini, and even Great Harbor Cay, the islands surrounding the anchorage are unpopulated, and for the most part seemingly untouched by man.  Our first full day there, the boys set up the hookah and dove around the shallows exploring the fish and looking for lobsters.  Given that the wind was somewhat Northerly, it was a little too cold for me to want to be in the water.  Aside from a few baraccudas and many conchs, the guys reported back that there was not much to see in the waters around our anchorage, and that the current was quite strong - two additional deterrents for me going for a swim.  Our second day at the anchorage, we decided to load up in the dinghies and take a ride over to the beautiful pristine beaches to wade around, and to hike up the trail on Hoffman’s Cay to see the famous blue hole (see pictures).  Supposedly there’s a Giant Grouper that lives in the blue hole, but all that we saw were some mollusks and a lone jellyfish (which again was a deterrent to getting into the water).  We hiked right down to the water’s edge and peered in, and took a little time to explore the cave formations that have carved out over time as the water has erroded the limestone around the hole.  On our way up, Martijn went slightly ahead of us, reaching the lip of the blue hole well before the rest of us, and much to everyone’s amusement, I got a chance to demonstrate my Payne genes - letting out a whoop of surprise when he threw a rock into the hole from the top and startled the bejeezus out of me.  We were all having a good giggle about it for the next few hours as it had echoed wildly in the cavernous area.  Once we were all back at the top, we took one of the other trails leading off and wandered down to the beach  - which turned out not to be the route to the ruins as we’d hoped.  As the water was quite warm and appeared to be shallow, we decided we’d walk along the craggy shore back to our dinghies… not such a good plan.  Ultimately while the guys picked their way along the shoreline, Brian went and collected our dinghy and circled over to pick Cate and I up to bring us back to the beach.  We poked around a little while longer, then climbed into our dinghies and circled around to the other side of the island where we explored on the beach for a little while, then headed back to our boats for the remainder of the evening.
The next day we had planned to make the almost 2 mile dinghy ride to Flo’s Conch Shack on one of the neighboring cays.  We tried hailing them before we left, but figuring that we would be there around lunch time, it shouldn’t be an issue to get there and meet these folks, who according to the guidebooks are wonderful hosts, and have some great stories about the area as well as a delicious rum punch.  Cate, Brian and I loaded into our dinghy, while Martin and Mike went in Renaissance’s and we set off on our long ride… which became even longer as we had do circle around an extra set of cay’s to be able to actually reach Flo’s due to the sandbar in between which exposes at low tide.  Mike and Martijn went over the sandbar, walking the dinghy through the shallowest bits, and we all arrived at the same time at Flo’s… only to find it empty except for a few dogs and some chickens.  What a disappointment!  We waited for about an hour in the hopes that they would return, and while there played with trying to catch some of the crabs that were scuttling around on the piles of conch shells (Cate was the only one who was successful), and finally we gave up and climbed into our dinghies to head back to the anchorage.  Unfortunately, we’d timed the tides wrong, so we had thought we’d be able to cross the sand bar on our way back… not so. The tide was still falling, so we had to turn around and go back the long way around the other cays and back to our boats.  We made one stop at a beautiful little cay a little further down from our anchorage, where we collected scores of shells just by walking along the beach, and then returned to our boats for yet another rolly evening at anchor.  The next day we took one more exploratory dinghy ride to a small island where we’d noticed a beautiful beach with a chair positioned right underneath a huge coconut tree. While the guys explored the caves, Cate and I took a walk around the island (which is quite small) in the shallow water, and collected some more shells.  Unfortunately, the wind had still not abated, so we were unable to do our bonfire as we’d planned, and we were all anxious to move on, so we decided to make an early night of it in the hopes that we would be able to set out the following morning to sail either to Nassau or at least to Chubb Cay before the next weather front came through.  When we awoke the next morning however, we still hadn’t seen much abatement in the winds, but as we wanted to make it to Nassau before the next front, we decided that we would be making the trip straight there rather than stopping in Chubb as we’d first thought.  After brief discussion, Martijn decided that he was going to head off regardless, and we planned to all meet up in Nassau.  As we watched him pitch and roll out through the channel, we all thought to ourselves, hmmm perhaps best that we’re not departing today.  I hailed Martijn shortly after he’d cleared out of our view, and thus out of the tricky cut out of our anchorage to share some info I’d just found in our books about coming into Nassau, and he responded that he thought it best that we all stayed put as it was quite rough even out of the cut, and that he thought another day waiting for the winds to subside was advisable.  We concurred, and agreed that we’d all catch up in Nassau the following day.  We settled in for a very low key day at the anchorage and all turned in early so that we could set off for Nassau early in the morning.