Vacation Report - Day 3 Photos Part 2

Most of the beaches on Eleuthera seem fairly open to the ocean, are often isolated and were always completely deserted. Apparently having an entire beach to yourself holds pretty darn true in general on this particular island, even when the weather is at its finest.

While this is a very cool thing for confident ocean swimmers on days with great weather; you can understand MY reluctance to take a dip on my own in choppy seas with the only hope for help if something went awry was WH driving the rental beater (that broke down on us once) into town and calling the Coast Guard.

Broken Boat Beach is on the Atlantic side, which I found ironic because on the entire trip our 40 minute dip in the Atlantic ended up being the closest we would come to having a Caribbean experience. Basically, there's a long coral reef that reaches around the beach like a protective arm surround a clear, gorgeous, shallow sandy area dotted with small coral reefs. It's further protected by a second, larger reef a hundred yards or so offshore, so even with 30 mph winds and pretty choppy seas, this little spot of heaven was calm enough to swim. (Notice I said "calm enough" and not necessarily "warm enough.")

Road to Broken Boat Beach.

Short path from where to road dead ends to the beach.

View to the North up Broken Boat Beach.

Me, wondering why on earth I am about to take off my cozy warm sweatshirt and jump into the water.


While the beach was relatively calm compared to, ya know, the Atlantic Ocean... the swells still pushed us around quite a bit and in the end we weren't brave enough to swim all the way out to the encircling reef. We explored several of the "small" coral reefs that were closer in to shore (each was at least the size of an SUV, which was fine for us snorkeling newbies). These photos were taken with a cheap disposable underwater camera, so the quality isn't great. We were just happy to have proof of our endeavor.

Ooooh! Coral!


Hey look, another heap o' coral!

The obligatory underwater shot.


Before we left, I ditched the awkward snorkel situation, donned my beloved Vanquishers and did a short swim out as far as I was brave enough to go.

Yay me! Swimmin' in the ocean and not having a panic attack!