Cayo Blanco

Old cargo ship on the beach

We left Cabo Cruz at 6am thinking that we were going to sail 55 miles to Cayo Guincho.  We had 20-25 knots of wind right on our beam and had an awesome sail.  We were cruising at 7-7.5 knots with all sails up (remember, we are 37 tons so for us that is moving!).  There was a bit of wind chop, but as we got closer to some of the reefs, the seas dropped down to between 1-2 feet!  It was ideal conditions!

Local fishermen coming to say hello

As we were about to come up to one of the passes through some cays / reefs that was about 15 miles from our final destination, our friends on Sabbaticus called us up on the VHF and said they found Cayo Blanco - a great little cay with a white sand beach and wanted to stop and do a little snorkeling and break up the trip.  We thought it was a great idea, especially Niko who was dying to run around on a beach again.  Our electronic chart said there was only 4.5 feet in there but Kevin on Sabbaticus said he didn’t see anything less than 15 so we decided to go for it.  We anchored in the nook of the Cay in about 12 feet of water.  We cleaned up the boat from our sail, put the dingy in the water and took Niko to shore to romp around.  Then we got our snorkeling gear and spear together to hunt some lobster and fish.  The water was a little murky, most likely because there were a ton of mangroves on the cay.  There wasn’t really a reef line or big coral heads, but rather almost like little boulders with fans, sea grass and a bunch of smaller fish.  The snorkeling was not quite as pretty as Cabo Cruz nor did we find any lobster, but it is a nice place to stop non-the-less, if nothing else to break up one long trip into two shorter ones.