The Glass Window Bridge is
one of Eleuthera's most famous landmarks. The Glass
Window Bridge was a natural bridge until hurricane
Betsy washed it away in 1965. It was named the
Glass Window Bridge because sailors on the rough
Atlantic side could look through at the nice
Caribbean side
Monday, November 7th, 2005:
A picture of the our beach is
on
Google Earth's Homepage!
There are five satellite photos on the homepage
and the one on the far right has our house in it.
What are the Odds?!
The Atlantic side is the dark blue and the
Caribbean side is the light blue. The Bahamians
call the Caribbean side the sea and the Atlantic
side the ocean.
To find Gaulding Cay follow the Caribbean coast
till you find a small island. Our house is directly
in from the cay. The Glass Window Bridge just got
cut out of the picture. The average width of
Eleuthera is roughly two miles, some places it gets
very wide and at the Glass Window it goes down to a
one lane bridge. Where we live its exactly a half
mile wide.
The big point at the top left of the map is
Mutton Fish point, two coves towards Mutton fish
from our beach is Lenny Kravitz's beach. The water
from our beach to Nassau (which is 50 miles to the
west) doesn't get deeper than 40 feet. On the
Atlantic side it drops off right away.
Thursday, November 3rd, 2005:
We went down to Singing Sands
resort today. The rooms and restaurant are really
cool. Its right on the beach.
On the way back I saw the Eleuthera's new fire
truck. It looks pretty nice. We stopped at Matt
Hoopes's house and I found a Bananaquit (Coereba
flaveola) eating his papayas. Here's a picture of
it.
On the way back home we turned down Sweetings
pond road and found it blocked, but we got some
good pictures of a Smooth Billed Ani (Crotophaga
ani).
Tons of Monarch butterflies (Danaus
plexippus) just showed up for the winter today. I
was out for an hour taking a pictures of them and
only got one good one. The Monarchs come down here
every year for the winter, but I haven't paid much
attention to them. This year I'm going to try and
find a lot of different butterflies. I think I saw
two Tiger Swallowtails but I couldn't get close
enough to tell.
I took this picture earlier today.
Click here for a
bigger picture.
My dad took a picture of my mom and I walking on
the beach. You can barely make out our cat in the
left hand corner. Pretty sunset.
Tuesday, November 1st, 2005:
Eleu.net has just
been updated with information about the new resort
called Singing Sands. It looks really nice. Here's
the link:
www.eleu.net/joes.html
Monday, October 31st, 2005:
I went to the pond at Mutton
fish point today. The pond is one of the few fresh
water ponds on Eleuthera. I saw two giant egrets
there, so there must be some fish in there.
I tried to walk by the pond to look for fish and
I sunk a foot down into pudding-like mud. It took
me while to get out and when I finally did the
egrets had left so I couldn't take a picture of
them. Here is a picture of the pond.
The tide was lower than I've ever seen it
before. We could walk out to the cay without
getting our knees wet. Its probably so low because
its almost a new moon and the east winds pushing
all of the water out.
My dad turned 52 today. He did a handstand on the
beach today for us.
Saturday, October 29th, 2005:
There were two herons on the
end of the cay this morning. My mom and I were
going to paddle out to take a picture of them but
they flew away before we could get out.
Yesterday there was a snowy egret (Egretta thula)
on one of the points. This was the first time I've
seen a snowy egret in the Bahamas.
My dad and I went fishing out
on the Cay late this afternoon, the tide was very
high. We weren't getting any hits a all. My line
got all tangled up and I had to spent about twenty
minutes undoing it. When I finally got my line
undone, I cast and got a giant tug. I had a good
fight and pulled in a 21 inch mutton snapper (Lutjanus
analis) using a yellow jig. A lot of people in
Eleuthera only use yellow jigs.
My mom baked it using a Pete Fox recipe and it
turned out excellent.
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005:
Magnificent
Frigate (Fregata magnificens) birds usually are out
at sea. We don't see them that much here, and when
they are here they are usually flying high around
the cay. Frigate birds like to steal other birds
food, but they will get their own if they have to.
They can't walk or swim very well. We see Bahama
Mockingbirds harass them a lot. We see them around
our house in groups when bad storms come. The only
time we get a good look at them are when storms
come. After hurricane Frances there was a frigate
bird ten feet above us.
Our beach is completely different. The west
winds from hurricane Wilma pushed in a lot of sand.
My mom found a Pearly Razorfish (Xyrichtys novacula)
washed up on the beach yesterday. I was so mad,
because every time we go snorkeling I have been
looking for them and haven't seen one. Razorfish
have a sharp head and dart in the sand when
threatened.
Our beach today. The sand point is new.
Pearly Razorfish. Look at the teeth!
Pearly Razorfish
My mom woke me up earlier
this morning to get ready for hurricane Wilma. We
went out to the beach to tie up some small
sailboats that Skip has here to teach the Bahamian
kids to sail. He has six lasers and six optis on a
trailer. I started to tie a boat up and a gust
lifted two optis and a laser right off the trailer.
The laser went right over my head and landed about
sixty feet away.
I went down to the beach to take some pictures
of the waves. The water was coming up fast.
My parents made me go back to the house to help
with more jobs for a while. I didn't go outside
much till 4pm. When I went back out the water
covered our whole beach. I walked down to the
neighbors with my mom took some pictures of their
back yard.
I walked around the house a bit and saw
nine frigate birds (Fregata magnificens) flying not too far away. I ran back home to get the
camera but when I got back there was only one left.
On the way home with my mom we saw four frigate
birds. The winds were a lot stronger than we
thought they would be. The power is out now. I'm
using a generator so I'll write more later.
I found a small Fowl snake (E.
striatus mccraniei) in our yard today. It could be
the pigmy boa, but I don't think it is. They are
both in the Boa family. He was only about seven
inches long. This is the smallest Fowl snake we
have ever seen. I took about a 30 pictures of him
and only a few came out. These snakes can get up to
nine feet long, but they don't get very big around.
Tomorrow I'll post a picture of a big one we saw
when we first got here.
Fowl snake in our yard:
Tuesday, October 18th, 2005:
We went up to Egg island a few
weeks ago in the C. S. Trader. (40' Marina Trawler)
Egg island is a small island just north of current
cut. It's about 15 miles away from our house by
boat. We anchored off a beach and snorkeled to
shore. We snorkeled around a bit even though the
water was very murky.
On the way back to the boat. I looked to my
left and saw two giant Bottle-nosed dolphins. They
scared the life out of me until I saw what they
were. They swam about ten feet away and then came
right by us. Sometimes they would swim away and we
would think they had left and then they would come
right back at us and make another close pass. One
time they went about three feet away from us. I
could here them making the clicking noise. I was
kind of scared of them at first because they were
so big. They were about 8 feet long.
The next day we went snorkeling in the same
place and a big Spotted Eagle ray swam really slow
by us. It was really cool.
A few days ago
Pete Fox took us fishing in his dinghy. We launched
the boat by Governors Harbour airport on the
Atlantic side. It was pretty rough out. The first
fifteen minutes we didn't get very many hits, but
after a while we got tons of hits.
Sometimes
we would be reeling in a fish and a big barracuda
would come up and bite it. We usually just got a
head but sometimes the barracuda would get hooked
then we would bring it in. One time a cuda hit the
fish so hard that both of them went spinning
through the air.
Most of the fish we caught were Yellowtail
snapper and Bar Jack. While we were out, a big
rainstorm came in between us and where we launched.
We waited a while and then decided to head into it.
It dissipated when we headed into it though. We
didn't get too wet. The water color was really
pretty sometimes.
On the way back we got wet from the spray
hitting the boat. It felt good, because it was so
hot out. We were trolling with bait casters and
yellow jigs. When we went in we counted the fish.
We caught eighty fish! We kept a few fish, but most
of them went to Pete's Bahamian friends. They
ranged from 9 to 10 inches to over four feet. (The
one that was over four feet was a barracuda. One of
the barracuda's I caught was just an couple inches
under four feet.)
When we would bring the barracudas in the
boat, we would stuff them under our feet, they
would flop around a lot. I was kind of nervous
because their teeth are so big.
Thursday, October 13th, 2005:
Sorry I haven't been posting
because of updating problems. We went snorkeling
around the cay yesterday and saw some groupers, an
eagle ray, and a big barracuda. A few days ago Pete
Fox took us fishing on the Atlantic side. We went
down by Governors Harbour airport. We took Pete's
dinghy out. It was pretty rough. There were some
big waves and a lot of chop. We caught 80 fish.
Most of them were Yellowtail Snapper and Bar Jack.
We got a few barracudas too. I might write more
about it another day.
Thursday, October 6th, 2005:
A small bird flew into our
house and hit a window yesterday. After about
twenty seconds he was flying around in our screened
in porch. If anybody know what kind it is please
email me.
UPDATE: I just found out that this bird is a
Hooded Warbler.
I found a cool bird research website for Eleuthera.
Click here to go
to it.
Here is another picture of a Banana
spider.
Tuesday, October 4th, 2005:
While we were coming from back
from the Surfers beach (Atlantic side) we saw a
small cuckoo on our driveway. I got out of the car
and took a few pictures of him and then a small
bird chased him away. I looked it up when I got
home it was a Thick-billed Vireo. I started to walk
back home and I saw a big Banana spider. I took
some pictures of it too.
Yesterday we went
snorkeling around the cay. We saw some groupers and
a big turtle. The turtle was eating the sea grass.
When we tried to get close he swam off.
Great Lizard Cuckoo
Thick-billed Vireo
Banana Spider
We found a new grass patch that has a small
reef on it. My dad and I took the kayak out to it
to go snorkeling. We saw a lot of cool fish. We
liked the reef so much we went back out a few days
later. This time we took the camera. Here are some
pictures of some of the fish.
Yellow Stingray
Yellow Stingray
School of Black Margates and
Grunts
Juvenile Queen Angelfish
September 4th, 2005:
I'm
back. I was at the Florida Yacht club for the
summer. I had a lot of fun there. The Yacht club is
in Jacksonville on the St. Johns River. The Florida
Yacht club is the oldest yacht club in Florida.
There is a lot of
wildlife in the area. I saw plenty of birds,
manatees, and two alligator gars. We took out two
optis with just rudders and I got to swim with the
manatees which was really scary. There were at
least four manatees. Me and my friend Bennett were
in the water pulling ourselves as close to the
boats as we could.
They have a
sailing camp where they teach kids how to sail
Optis, Lasers, and 420s. I
was an assistant instructor there. I helped mainly
with rigging and de-rigging, but I helped coach a
little too. I would like to thank Skip Miller, the
waterfront director, and all of the people at the
Yacht Club. I really enjoyed the summer.
Here is some links
that go to the Florida Yacht club's website:
