One of the tiny Pimlico Cays along the shallow draft route from Lee Stocking to Rudder

Rudder Cut Cay appears to be named after Rudder Cut which got its name either from the rudder shaped tiny cay that sits south of the cut or from the ship that lost its rudder after hitting a huge fish in Exuma Sound near the cut. Once again, you can choose the story you like best.

Rudder Cut Cay is privately owned; not sure by whom but whoever owns it is very determined to keep everyone off the island and the beaches.  A beach guard dog and sturdy, serious signs warn that trespassers will be prosecuted. Cameras in various places even appear real.

The dog is an effective way to keep you off the beach. Feel bad for the dog anyway.

Fortunately we came to snorkel the stainless steel underwater sculpture firmly placed in sand in 12-15ft of clear water, compliments of David Copperfield, owner of Musha Cay (just north of Rudder) and several other small cays nearby. If our research is correct, he shelled out $50 million in 2006 and spends maybe 10 weeks/year here. Individuals and groups with mega bucks can visit the resort with its lovely curved beach, beautiful palms and a gorgeous all-mahogany dock with room for a few go-fast boats. Trained macaws pick up flotsam and debris and deposit their finds in a trash container; we saw this in action when we took Bunting around for a look-see.

Real mahogany docks at Musha Cay

As you know we are without an underwater camera so we borrowed a shot of the piano with mermaid sculpture for your viewing pleasure.

Worth donning mask and fins for

Around the corner from where we’d anchored was this very cool cave that you could walk or dinghy into at low tide; and that darn dog couldn’t chase you away! Complete with a teeny beach, the requisite skylights and interesting cracks and crevices, we also spied a juvenile conch making tracks for someplace to call home.

Inside the cave

Very unusual for a cave to have a beach

Looking out from the cave- I’m conch walk watching

Around 2pm it was time for us to make tracks- all the way to Cave Cay, 3 miles north. Just far enough to make hot water and give the reasonably happy batteries an additional boost. With the sun getting higher in the sky, we‘ve noticed much better solar charging.

Tuesday (Jan 11) we headed out to our favorite sand bar which sits one mile west of Cave Cay. This was the site two years ago where we took the photo you see as our Gravatar, using the timer and setting the camera on top of the dinghy box which we set up on the seat. Today was another gorgeous low wind, clear, low humidity day; perfect for beach combing and feeling very lucky to be here.

Looking west away from land

Looking east toward Cave Cay. This is the white stuff we love!

Sand bar treasures vary with the day, week and year. We came across several (living) deep orange sea stars, only a few young conch and I picked up a bunch of white sand dollars to add to my growing collection.

Would you call this a rock star? The song: Sea Star Love

Russ had the camera- how could I refuse?

Around 2pm we headed 4nm north to the next cay, Big Farmers, where exactly two months ago we anchored to stage for heading down Exuma Sound to George Town. Although that feels like a fast two months, we’ve packed a whole bunch of activities and places into it. Today would be the last of the “do anything you want days” for who knows how long but we hadn’t counted on a repair project to top things off. While at the beach we noticed that the Hypalon strip that is glued to the dinghy below the rubrail, and is used to hold the bottom edge of the chaps down (remember how the water would find its way under the chaps until we Velcroed a strip of Hypalon to the chap’s bottom edge and then glued the bottom edge of the strip to the dinghy?) was becoming unglued on one side. Back aboard Russ performed a quick “dry and re-glue” that we hope will last at least until Florida.