Salt Pond, Long Island

April 30, 2007

After the regatta in George Town, we hoped for settled, calm weather in order to spend a couple weeks in the Jumento Cays and the Raggeds. However the forecast for the next week is for east winds with squalls and thunderstorms every day. No problem; we chose Plan B: Long Island. Just east of George Town, Long Island is over 80 miles long and its population earns a rather good living off the ocean. They are also great sailors and their boats placed well in all classes of the Family Island Regatta.


Squalls and thunderstorms don't allow for much snorkeling or sailing, but they do provide amazing aerial shows.

We met up with Michael and Renee on the catamaran “Jacumba” and we all decided to sail to Long Island together on Sunday. It was raining when we left George Town, and the sky was black all around us for the entire sail to Long Island, but we managed to stay under a patch of blue sky. We kept on opening and closing hatches and putting the cushions away and getting them back out again in anticipation of rain that never hit us.



The white sand beach we found...although Disney found it first because it was used in the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean.


flotsam and jetsam found on the white sand beach

Two big milestones occurred in our sail to Long Island: 1) we crossed the Tropic of Cancer. We’re in the tropics now!; and 2) Hans found a tiny, deserted, sand island. We made a quick detour, dropped anchor and went for a swim in the warm, crystal clear water. The clouds continued to look ominous, so we continued onward to Long Island and arrived around 5:30PM. A 10-minute walk on the beach, where we saw a native Osprey (different from the migratory ones were used to seeing on the Chesapeake), was interrupted by thunder so we all scurried back to our boats, watched a gorgeous sunset and were awoken around 2:30 AM by torrential downpour. Jacumba caught a lot of water and we were happy with squeaky clean decks.