We spent a few hours on Thursday morning exploring the beach at Raccoon Cay, Loyalist ruins, and tracking down a blue hole which turned out to be green and not blue while hearing the bleating of goats (the only island inhabitants) in the brush but never actually seeing any.
We had previously been advised that Hog Cay was the gathering place for cruisers in the Ragged Islands - with walking trails, a nice beach, and a social scene, and as we were only about 8 miles from Hog Cay, we pointed our bow SE and set off after a late lunch. Around 5:30 pm. We pulled into the anchorage and joined the twelve other sailboats in the anchorage, setting down our anchor, by chance, next to Will and Sherry who we had met four days earlier at Tiny’s Hurricane Hole at Thompson’s Bay, LI. We then placed the dinghy in the water to get ashore to the tiki hut/Hog Cay Yacht Club where Will & Sherry, and four other cruisers were having sundowners and where we picked their brains for information on the island’s hiking trails for tomorrow. The rafters of the Hog Cay Yacht Club were colorfully decorated with the homemade boats signs from passing cruisers, including one from SV Delos-(Brian, Karin & Sierra) a favorite YouTube cruising couple.
After a great night sleep with no swells, on Friday morning under sunny skies we set off on a cross island hiking trail with a picnic lunch. The trail just to the north of the Yacht Club took us up a ridge where we had water views of the anchorage to the west, a salt pond to the north, ocean waves to the east, and Ragged Island to our south. The trail was easy to find as it was well marked with plastic debris - mostly flip flops and shoes. After traversing the 0.5 miles to the eastern shore of Hog Cay, we went down to the beach/plastic collection area to find items that we could repurpose in making our boat sign to be added and displayed at the Hog Cay Yacht Club which is exactly what we did Friday afternoon after first enjoying our picnic lunch overlooking the breaking surf.
With our homemade Juno sign in hand, we returned to the Yacht Club where we added it to the many others decorating the rafters, then hunted down dried wood from the scrub brush for a fire later that evening after dinner. About 25 people representing about 6 -8 boats, most with children, were gathered and sharing in a potluck supper when we returned with wood in hand and we mentioned that they were invited to join the bonfire we’d be starting around 8:30 pm when the skies grew dark enough. So we returned to Juno for our dinner and saw a bonfire already burning on the beach around 7:30 pm. We weren’t sure what wood would be remaining when we showed up at 8:30 pm and were pleased to see our wood pile untouched as someone had lit a bag of trash on fire. Sadly, this trash contained beer cans, aluminum, and a lot of plastic and it was still burning even though the young families had departed and the yacht club was now occupied by a small group of French sailors who had arrived earlier in the day. We spoke to two young boys in French who seemed to be tending the fire and informed them that it wasn’t right to burn plastic garbage there on the scenic beach, that the fire pit was only for wood and paper. Their parents soon called the boys to leave for the night and now Harry and I had the beach to ourselves as we started a separate wood only fire to roast our marshmallows for s’mores. The evening left a sour note in our otherwise perfect day at Hog Cay.
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