Fowl, White, and Hoffman's Cay were our favorite islands in the Berry Islands because of all the great sailing and adventuring within a short distance. Our first adventure was the Blue Hole on Hoffman's Cay. After swimming with the jellyfish in the blue hole, we had our first lesson on how to fly our drone, a Mavic Air II. It was easier to fly than we thought.
The next adventure was snorkeling the cuts. We would take the dinghy out to the ocean and then float in with the incoming tide. We always had the dinghy with us just in case we needed to abort the snorkel, but that never happened. We were able to see all of the great fish and animal life milling about in the open pass. It was beautifully clear water...until the storms kicked up the sand.
Our last adventure was a trip to White Cay to hike the island and fly the drone. Then, Jeff had a brilliant idea to fly it while following our dinghy. It was a successful launch.
Overall, this was a great stay in this area and after 4 days we were ready to continue our journey North!
#sailing #sailboat #sailingprojects #fowlcay #whitecay #hoffmanscay #bahamas #berryislands #berrys
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It's my boat and I cry if I want to. It is time to go. We are leaving High Key.
It's been a great stay here but we've got to move on. It is coming up to low tide though and you can
see the water is just rushing out so we're gonna have to really pay attention to depth. We are
headed to Fowl Key this afternoon which is only about a 45 minute trip so it's a quick one for us.
It's not like the Exumas in that it has this a lot of white sand and beautiful blues but
it really does offer great animal life and just some pretty remote and rugged islands so
we highly recommend going to the Berries. We're gonna get to see our friends Dorothy
and Stephan who are in that beautiful catamaran right there. Excited to see them again.
Whoa that's looking pretty dark over there and it's headed our way. Off we go. Time for a sundowner
over at our friends Ultraman. The sailing community is amazing. We met Stephan and
Dorothy in Little Pipe Key two weeks earlier and getting to see them all along the way heading
north is a bonus. This was our first visit to Envia and she is a beautiful yacht. All right
what a joy. We had a big rain last night probably only lasted for I don't know 20 minutes but it was
ferocious. Brown's got the engines going so that just in case we start dragging it uh
it'll be okay. Check out the uh check out the radar. Wow that's a big storm. What we have in here
is leaking. We probably pulled out two full containers from the wetback down in there which
is a significant amount of water. This is something that we definitely need to get fixed.
Anyway we're figuring this out so we're gonna oh now one of my favorites after the H7
industrial cleaner is this Corrosion X HD and this is U.S. Navy approved. It's an extra
thick version sticky of the regular Corrosion X. I am going to take this and rub it
on my hands and it's going to get all over me. I'm going to take it and massage the underneath of the
engine where the oil pan is because this is an area where corrosion comes and if you have to
change the oil pan it's a big deal. You got to pull the engine. It's not a cheap job so we want
to prevent that from happening. Let this stop. Yes okay well the problems mount. What type of
delights are we finding now sweetie? If you don't look under things you never find the problems
so I'm gonna stop looking under things from now on. Tons of salt crystals. That means that the
water has been in there and dried and you know it's been in there a long time and it's
probably a very insignificant amount overall if you aren't feeling it slosh around or
what's in the dry vac was down there. How much water?
That's significant. That's significant for salt water A. B. I don't know when it went down there
so that could be three days drying a week drying. Brown it's time for another diaper.
Oh for the water and oil that's in our engine? Yeah. Do you know why I really need a diaper?
No it's a diaper change for the big baby because he cries all the time when he's inside the engine.
Yes you're right I need a diaper because I'm a big baby with a lot of boat problems right now.
Hold on you want to meet my baby? Hold on one second.
The big baby is me. This boat is making me crazy. It's my boat and I cry if I want to
cry if I want to. My engine is wet and it could happen to you.
Goodbye home. Going adventuring. We are off to the blue hole on Hoffman Key.
Famous blue hole and first we need to secure the dinghy. Welcome to the blue hole. Who's
there goes. Definitely want to get it in before it goes into preservation mode. Here it comes.
Elaine's underneath the canopy. This is going to be a little risky. There she is.
Way to go jet pilot drone pilot. Way to go retriever. I know of course it didn't. Okay
so right now we're going to do something really exciting and we're going to show you how to fly
the Mavic Air 2 drone. I'll launch it first and then I'll teach you guys to fly forward backward.
Cool. Basically all it is is up down forward backward right left spin right spin left
on itself. Cool. Toggle camera to see down and this is trigger for the camera or the video.
Okay and then this is switches between camera and video and this is return to home. Okay
and you can cancel that usually. Great. I'll go up about 50 feet I'd say. To practice well
right now you're looking straight ahead. Toggle the camera down. Yes so I would say go forward
and play around with the joysticks. Elaine's doing a great job. Her first time flying the drone. Way
to go babe. Sensors in the front and sensors on the bottom but there are no sensors on the side
so to make your approach to grab the sucker from the side is your best. That makes sense.
Ron's first launch. Mush. Mush. Mush. I got it. We're adventuring a little bit. That was a pretty
pass that we just came through. A lot of great live coral and now we're looking for another spot
and the boys are taking us there with the floors. It's going to be a while.
Here we are planning our re-entry into the U.S. from Grand Bahama the West End. We are going to
go from West End all the way to where? Where are we heading in North Carolina? Okarachi. Okarachi.
What are you talking about? That's the New York version. Did you mean okra coke? Pretty funny
over here. Yesterday we didn't adventure so today we're gonna make up for it. Adventure Sensei has
a plan. And the plan is to beach the dinghy on White Key, explore the island and fly the drone.
Then we are going to get in our dinghy and Jeff is going to try for the first time to have the
drone follow our dinghy to a beach at a different location. Let's see how this all works out.
I love the berries and in particular we're at White Key which is what we're on right now.
We're going to do some exploring. This is the main island that protects us from the open ocean.
One of the best things about sailing is getting to explore these uninhabited
tiny rugged islands and getting to see the views from them which are absolutely stunning.
And we are doing that today. We're going to check out a number of islands and
try out some new drone techniques. So we're looking forward to that.
