2016 Bahamas Adventure: Sampson Cay, Exumas

Our next stop is Sampson Cay, a 1.5-hour motor down the Exumas – the first part of the trip involved some “video game” navigating through some shallow areas, but eventually we entered the deeper water on the banks and made our way to Sampson.

Like yesterday, we arrived late morning, had lunch and then set off on a snorkeling expedition – this time to a stag horn coral garden featured in the Exumas guide. The garden surrounded a rock islet in the middle of the cut between Overyonda and Sampson cay. Fortunately, we arrived at roughly slack tide, so there wasn’t much current. The garden was lovely, full of sponges, staghorn, brain and pipe coral as well as an abundance of small fish and ubiquitous black sea urchins. In relatively shallow water, it was beautifully lit by the sun and very pristine – a delight to hover over.

Unfortunately, the current started to build so we had to cut our visit short – indeed, Sue and Michael started back to the dinghy while I lingered a few moments behind. They both had to swim hard to get around the Island and back to the dinghy. By the time I started back, the current had built to a point where I couldn’t make it around the Islet against the current. The best I could do was swim to stand still in the water – rather than exhaust myself in an attempt to get back, I signaled for Sue and Mike to come over and pick me up, which they did.

We then dinghied up to Tamarind cay, looking for another site to snorkel but were unsuccessful in finding one. However, we did “check out” a nice anchorage between Tamarind and a group of rocks called “The Mice” that would be a good place to take the big boat next time we were in the area.