In our eagerness to make sure we delivered our guests to Staniel Cay in time to get a flight back to Nassau, we arrived a little early and found we had a day in hand so after mming and arring for a bit (over a mammoth set of pancakes cooked by Phil and eaten by kids +Chris) we decided to retrace our steps a little and visit Compass Cay where there was the promise of petting nurse sharks over lunch.The Staniel Cay cut out to the Sound is quite narrow but once out it was a just an hour’s cruise north and then back in through a cut that was actually to some degree marked. We weren’t able to anchor near the marina but found a spot on a sand bank just outside and dinghied in.
Lunch was cooked on an outdoor barbecue and was a choice of hamburger or hotdog to the kids’ delight and was, in fact, delicious.
But what was incredible, was the pre-lunch activity. I was in the second landing party and arrived to find the children already on the small jetty watching a couple who were petting the nurse shark. The kids were a little reticent at first, but with some encouragement started to coax the sharks to come to them and stroke them. We had a wonderful time watching the sharks and their companions – some fabulous Grey Angels and other reef fish – stroking them and feeling how like sandpaper they felt and trying to give them their names -- the smallest and most inquisitive was called Squirt. Squirt was the most frequent visitor and while the other, larger sharks quite regularly went to the bottom and rested, he was constantly on the move.
