The Joys of Pig Beach

I recently read an article that highlighted 50 tourist destinations around the world that are not worth visiting and the Swimming Pigs at Staniel Cay made the list. Many tourist come to Big Major Spot to see pigs – they’re just pigs! As we sit here anchored in the late afternoon, it’s finally quiet – no tour boats or planes (yes float planes bring tourist to swim with pigs – I kid you not!) are visiting the pigs.

We rode out the weekend north blow at Cambridge and that was a great decision. I need to talk about our anchor right now. At the end of last season, we were both unhappy with the performance of the 80lb Manson anchor we bought from a couple at Reynolds. We thought it would be an excellent anchor (it’s huge!!) but instead the anchor was difficult to set and it dragged a few times. We’ve already had chats about replacing this anchor for next season. Well I think the anchor has been listening to us (and Mark has figured out some tricks to make it work well). So far it has been rock solid!! It’s been setting well and holding in strong clocking wind and also in strong current areas where the boat rotates directions with the current. It is definitely redeeming itself. Will it be enough – the jury is still out on that one!!

We decided to leave Cambridge on Monday (Feb. 13) to head to Staniel Cay. We really needed more fresh veggies, milk and bread and Staniel is the closet settlement with little grocery stores. We had a great downwind sail on Monday and made the 12 nm trip in about 1.5 hours. When we arrived at Big Major (this is the closest large anchorage to Staniel Cay) the north wind had created a bouncy, rolling mess!! We decided not to anchor there and instead continued to the east side of Big Major which is called between the Majors. This is a channel that runs between Big Major and Little Major. It was a great decision and we had a fairly calm night.

This morning we made the move over to Big Major. The wind had died down and all was calm! As we came into the anchorage we slowed and started looking for a good spot – keeping an eye out for the crazy tourist speedboats as well as other cruisers coming in. What we weren’t looking for was a float plane that landed about 30 ft off our bow!!!! I can’t even begin to explain how surprised we were – a plane landed in front of us – so now you have to check the sky too!!!!

We did get into town for a few groceries and we took the dinghy out for a spin around the islands here. We’ll only stay tonight – tomorrow we’ll head down to Black Point for awhile!