One thing I love about our cruising life is that we get to enjoy different atmospheres in different places.
So after the hustle and bustle of St Barths life, if you can call it that (it’s actually very laid back but compared to some islands,and during the St Barths Bucket race, it’s hustle and bustle!!) we were looking forward to some down time so we sailed the short hop across to Ile Fourchue.
Ile Fourchue is a tiny, deserted island just north of St Barths where we anchored for 2 days after leaving St Barths. It was meant to be a quick one day stay but it was so tranquil that we stayed an extra day.
We were lucky to be the only boat there…and that felt great! No more lights from any towns, no noise from, well…ANYTHING! It was just us again! We love exploring towns and spending time with cruiser friends but we also love the times where we can be alone, when there’s just the 4 of us, the variety is perfect.
We snorkelled a few times on both days and spent some time on the first afternoon doing a beach clean up which is something we do on a regular basis. Actually, we’ve made it our ‘thing’ to collect a few things on every snorkel we do and a big clean up on most beaches we go to. It’s pretty disappointing to see how much garbage we humans let slip into the ocean so we’re trying to do our bit to help.
Before we left Ile Fourchue we thought one more quick snorkel was needed. It turned out to be one of the best snorkels we’ve done to date.
We swam with a shark. She came out of nowhere and let us swim with her for about 10 minutes. Granted, she wasn’t huge, just over a metre, but it was pretty awesome to follow her around and the kids even tried to swim down to her level but she was a little too quick for them!
We then came across a beautiful turtle who seemed tame enough to be a pet! We swam around with her for a long time, which she seemed to enjoy and swam down to her countless times, gently patting her gorgeous shell and taking photos! Maybe she was a movie star that lived in St Barths and came to Ile Fourchue on weekends to escape the paparazzi, because she was so comfortable with us hanging around and we delighted in her presence.
We’d been in the water so long that we were beginning to look like prunes so we decided it was time to head home for some lunch. As we swam away we were suddenly surrounded by 13 barracudas!
Yep, 13 of them! No, they weren’t the big daddys (I’d have peed myself if they had been any bigger!!!) but 13 of them circling you, staring at you with their beadie eyes and revealing their sharp teeth at you is kinda freaky!
Needless to say we swam home a little faster than usual. So fast that I didn’t even think about turning around to take photos!!
We didn’t feel it at the time but barracudas are actually pretty harmless, they’re just curious…so they say!
So what was supposed to be a quick, last snorkel, turned into a very long, amazing one!
