Beach Combing and Spouts

  It has been rather breezy down here lately and that is illustrated by the wave action in this photo. Usually we need a day or two of light winds before the sea settles down and obviously they still have some additional room for improvement. In this case it had been blowing 30+ knots for what seemed like a couple of days but now it has diminished to about 15 knots. Given this more subdued environment we could walk the beach and merely be treated to a mild facial exfoliation instead of being completely sand blasted. With that we decided to take a walk at low tide yesterday.
 All along the way we kept our eyes open for interesting bits in the surf and along the shore. Today's combing offered up a small trident and a few pieces of interesting glass but by and large the beaches are still devoid of artifacts of sea life. There is still plenty of debris from passing cruise ships and a deep pile of weeds washed up but shells and sea glass finds are few and far between. But the water is warm, the wind not so bad and the sun is shining. All things considered was a great day for this walk.
 Along the way we could see the repairs made to the beaches with bulldozers where people could afford to have the dune protecting their property restored. It's a shame but it's a fact of life. Some people cannot afford to fight the sea and they will eventually lose their investment. Others keep piling up the sand and in many cases this seems to be effective. But then they may have a more substantial section of reef just off shore that reduces the force of the waves landing.
 Today with the calming continuing to progress, we finally launched the dink even though we arrived at Sea Spray back on 1/25. Once in the water it cooperated by starting up easily so I moved it around to the side of the boat where we could get into it more easily. Having some transportation now, and given the establishments on Lubbers were closed, we chose to travel around to Firefly for lunch. We have to say the view from their bar is without a doubt one of the best that Elbow Cay has to offer. While we enjoy the staff, food and environment at Sea Spray, some types of change are good. It was a refreshing break offering up an expansive view of the Sea of Abaco and the approaching weather.
 Even though we were in the dink the weather didn't seem to matter because most of it was to the West and moving slowly in our direction. Besides lunch was very good, and served to distract us from what was happening over the Northern Sea of Abaco. Deb had these bacon wrapped lobster skewers and I had a snapper sandwich that was on ciabatta bread with a spicy island tomato kind of salsa and sweet potato fries. Combined with the view it made for a memorable lunch. And then a bit of excitement developed when we started seeing the spouts forming in the distance. If you click on the photo at left the image of the spout is a bit easier to pick out. We figure this one was probably headed towards Guana Cay or Green Turtle but we have yet to hear anything so hopefully everyone is ok and no damage was done. Deb and I both agreed that sitting at a bar with a cool drink and lunch was a much better environment to review spouts versus being in the middle of the Gulf Stream.