After a slightly rolly night in West Bay, we caught a good look of the 5 million dollar homes that line West Bay including one property we thought was part of a movie set. Turned out this property is owned by a Canadian fashion billionaire named Nygard who built up his property to look like an Aztec settlement with a pyramid, a giant 80 foot high parrot, and live peacocks calling to each other. Not surprisingly he is not popular with his neighbors according to a Vanity Fair article about this property that Harry found on the internet. Sunday morning we went ashore at Clifton - a national park at the south end of the bay, where we ran a short distance through the park along the coast. En route we saw two old plantation homes in ruins and a recreated Lucayan hut thatched with palm fronds.
Later, we set sail for Coral Harbor, about 5 miles south and east from West Bay, where Harry had arranged to leave Juno for the three days that we’ll be in NYC attending Sally’s thesis defense. With several thousand feet of water under the keel, fishing line deployed we rounded Goulding Cay when Harry looked back and saw a fish jump at his fishing lure. Harry quickly brought in his line and a beautiful Mahi Mahi was on the other end of the line. Harry then brought the 30 inch fish into the cockpit as we were moving along quite fast, and the fish flapped his way back into the ocean, but he was still hooked so Harry brought him back aboard once again while Sarah snapped a photo of this most beautiful fish. Time being of the essence, we poured a few capfuls of gin over his gills to kill the fish, and Harry set right into filleting the fish in the cockpit. Interestingly, the fish loses its bright colors within minutes of dying. Anyway, the stern of the cockpit was a bloody mess -as we had fish blood and Sarah’s hand bleeding. Her hand got poked by the fish hook in all the excitement, but we were rewarded with about 1.5 pounds of fresh fish for our last dinner on-board.
The catch put us a bit behind schedule and our hosts Nick and Carolyn Wardle in Coral Harbour were calling us on the VHF radio asking for our whereabouts so we motored upwind and in to Coral Harbour where we tied alongside ‘Sandpiper’ just in front of the Wardle's home on a canal in Coral Harbour. Nick welcomed us and informed us we were just in time for his daily ‘rum o’clock’ happy hour which we gladly joined along with his wife Carolyn and other sailor guests Jeff and Ellie aboard ‘Boundless’ who take six kids and a teacher for an educational week of sailing. The Mahi-Mahi cooked up nicely on the grill, but admittedly it got a bit overcooked. We need to work on that.
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| The Mahi-Mahi Before |
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| After |
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| Harbourmaster Nick Wardle |
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