A welcoming with teeth Lindsay McRory June 29, 1996 Plana Cay had some of the best beaches, snorkeling, and fishing we have seen to date. And after spending the last three months doing nothing but hanging out at beaches, snorkeling, and fishing we are pretty tough customers. There is nothing that resembles a harbor on Plana Cay. Our anchorage was in fine white sand on the leeward side of the island. The Cay blocked us from the five knots of wind, but there was an uncomfortable swell left over from a tropical wave that passed south of here a few days ago. It was a little too lumpy to spend another night. Shortly after leaving Plana Cay we had our first engine breakdown of the trip. A blockage in the fuel line stopped the iron jenny dead. If you've missed this experience--try bleeding your hot diesel engine in a four-foot swell--you should try it for a laugh. And be sure to have plenty of burn cream handy. The entire job could have been much worse if not for the way our fuel system is plumbed together. It was just a matter of selecting another fuel tank and primary filter, then bleeding the system. Later that day I used the electric transfer pump to suck out the blockage (I got lucky) then transferred 50 gallons of fuel from the main tank, through a primary filter, and into the port tank. With out this type of plumbing I would have had to take apart and clean the fuel line and change filters before I started the engine again. And there could be more gunk in the main tank, so without the transfer pump I would have had to hand pump the diesel into a bucket and strain it with T-shirts before putting it into another tank. What a joy that would have been. On our charts, the entrance through the reef at Abraham Bay on Mayaguana Island looks like a beginner's practice exercise. The four-mile-long reef breaks all the time, clearly advertising its position. The cut through the reef is more than one-eighth of a mile across and fairly easy to spot from sea. The entire bay is peppered with widely spaced, hull-tearing coral heads. They are easy to see. I was at the bow spotting the little hull smashers. Denise was at the helm. We were in the middle of the cut when the Hakuana Matata lurched up and fell sideways. Waves had built up quickly in the cut through the reef, and Denise had lost steerage. Full rpm's to the engine and we started coming around. Every wave that overtook us wanted to knock us sideways. We were now smoking along at eight knots, going from water that was 3,000 feet deep to nine feet of water, trying to maintain steerage while keeping away from coral heads. A pressure cooker! After a couple of turns around a rock and one coral head, we slid into the calm protected waters behind the reef. Let's hope we don't have to do that again. The large waves in the cut were caused by a moderate three- to four-foot onshore swell. Combined with the extremely sharp change in water depth, the stored energy in the waves have a small area to dissipate. Even though the swell was small, it played out with intensity. The conditions were similar to what's known as a "rage" down here. Harbors can be closed for days waiting for onshore conditions to subside. To this point, the southern Bahamas have had great bottoms for setting our anchors, typically a fine, white, sometimes pasty, sand. If you bent a shovel and used it for an anchor, it would probably stick through a hurricane, thanks to these anchoring conditions. The bottom at Abraham Bay is as hard as a K Mart parking lot (close to the reef, anyway). When I snorkeled the anchors I repeatedly lifted the CQR anchor and drove it down hard, but the sharp point would not penetrate the hard sand. I found a small crater and dragged the CQR into it. The MAX anchor fared a little better. After dragging for 30 feet it shoveled up enough bottom to hold itself in place. I was going to test it by hand when the welcoming committee showed up. A 12-foot shark and a barracuda swimming side by side can only mean trouble. They came within ten feet of me and then swam off, but started a slow circle around the boat and back towards me. I figured this had to be some sort of gang-related thing and thought it best to get out of their neighborhood. No doubt there is some diver someplace thinking, "Oh, they would never hurt you. It's just natural curiosity." Sorry. I don't think barracudas are curious about much except where their next meal is coming from. We met a local spear fisherman who mixed it up with a barracuda the other day. The pesky five-foot misunderstood sea creature took a love bite out of his flipper (just naturally curious about the taste, I guess), then started smelling his legs. In the end, Mr. Curious swam off with a six-foot stainless spear through his midsection. The fisherman did say that in three years of swimming with barracudas nearly every day, he's never had one act up on him like this guy. The finned crowd aside, we've found the people at Abraham Bay are super-friendly. There are few boats that venture this far south in the Bahamas and few of those make the long dinghy ride into town. Walking around, people would pull over and offer us a lift. We had quite a few conversations with some very interesting people. There was one small restaurant in town so we took advantage of it. Like most places on the smaller islands, dinner is served family style. Family style means you get what mama's cookin' when she's done cookin it. No menu and you better be on time. The meals have all been excellent. After a fine meal and stroll, we headed back early to get Hakuna Matata ready for the passage to the Turks and Caicos.