but..why, it wasn't my fault, I .. you asked for a sandwich

What happened to the cool blog you ask? Exactly, I say. This week Deneen as been back in the states. Sounds like a good time to do all of those crazy things that you can't do with three boys who have a mother on a small desert island.

On Saturday, we made plans to pick up Justin and use his kayaks to go over to Gibbs Cay and swim with the stingrays. Gibbs Cay is an uninhabited island to the East of Grand Turk. It has a great white sand beach and good snorkeling. One of the dive companies has been feeding the stingrays there for a couple decades, so when you swim on the reef they come right up to you.

We needed to beat the heat, so we left at 9:00. The plan was to paddle over, snorkel for a couple hours, eat a packed lunch, and then head back before it got too hot in the afternoon. We would need a lunch and a lot of water.

I packed our lunch the night before. In my mind this was a pretty cool day, clear water, a nice lunch on the beach. It turned out to be more like George Costanza packing delicious sandwiches to go rock climbing with Toni.

I packed six turkey sandwiches with pepperjack cheese and cucumbers. I also made an onion, habanero, and tomato salad in case we found conch. And I froze a gallon container of tea to take with us. When we got the kayaks out at South Creek, I thought my bag was too heavy so I took out the watermelon and left it in the car.

We paddled out of the mouth of South Creek, but the wind was too strong to get across the bay to Gibbs Cay. Islands don't look far away until you try and paddle to one. We went across the bay and pulled the kayaks up onto the rocks below an area called Gun Hill. We snorkeled around the mouth of the creek for about two hours, and among other things, saw the biggest Barracuda we have seen so far.

We came out of the water and hiked back to where we left the kayaks. But my kayak was gone. It was floating out into the bay of the creek, with my backpack and our lunch sitting on the back. I jumped into the water and swam out to get it. Every time I would come out of the water the kayak was further away. It was far to swim, but I have to say that we swim for hours at a time three days a week, and all of us getting much healthier.

After several minutes of swimming, I finally reached the kayak. About the time I got in, Justin and Davis had paddled out to where I was. If you could ever see this area, you would never believe how far I swam. We headed back in. Put up the kayaks and ate our lunch standing in back of the van.

I had been plans to get a lot done over the weekend, but when we got home I was exhausted and we didn't do anything the rest of the day. We had Justin over for dinner and ate BBQ chicken, onion-habanero-tomato salad, and iced tea. Dinner was great.



The video did not turn out great, but I will post it because it looks like it was shot in the 1960s. Look at the land in the distance behind, then the tip of land on the far left, I swam from there.


Sunday? ditto.