Snorkeling and diving at Sandy Cay
Historically, on the day after Thanksgiving, Patrick and I would have been out shooting sporting clays, and all bundled up in jackets and boots. This year, we wore our swimsuits and went for a fun diving/snorkeling adventure at Sandy Cay.
Carole and Hugh are both dive instructors and have a compressor on their catamaran, so at Thanksgiving dinner we made a plan to meet them the next day at Sandy Cay to explore the underwater scenery. They had been for a dive at that spot on the morning of Thanksgiving and said it was terrific. Patrick has everything he needs for a dive except a tank, so he planned to borrow a tank from them and go for a dive with Carole, while Hugh would go snorkeling with Cecelia and me, to help us identify all the sea life we’d be seeing!
We anchored near Sandy Cay and dinghied over to Carosy, where Carole got Patrick ready for the dive while Cecelia and I listened in on their prep discussion. Hugh joined us after a work call, and we all piled into their dinghy with all our equipment, and headed over to the dive buoys to tie up.
Patrick and Carole headed out for their dive and the rest of us stuck around the dinghy in case they needed anything, then we jumped in to snorkel the reef ourselves. It was beautiful! We had forgotten to charge our GoPro, so unfortunately no photos of the amazing sea life, but we saw tons of different fish (parrotfish, hogfish, grouper, tangs…I can’t remember them all), all kinds of coral (including really neat fence-like elkhorn coral all over the place), turtles (a green turtle and a hawksbill turtle), and even two beautiful and HUGE spotted eagle rays that swam directly underneath us!
Hugh and Cecelia and I were hanging out in the dinghy after snorkeling, while Carole and Patrick finished up their dive, and this super friendly turtle swam right up to our boat and played with our feet! Then he circled around Carole and Patrick as they came back to the boat. It was pretty funny.
Carole had not forgotten to charge her GoPro, thankfully, and she and Hugh put together this awesome video of that day’s dive. Cecelia and I make a short bonus appearance at the end; go check it out to see some of the pretty scenery we got to enjoy. 🙂
Cecelia had been a little nervous about snorkeling before this adventure, and now I think we can say she’s totally hooked. Thanks so much, Carole and Hugh, for making this day awesome for all of us!
