Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas

Like Harvest Caye in Belize, which we visited several days ago, Great Stirrup Cay is privately owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL), which owns Oceania and Regent Cruise Lines. The island is about 135 miles east of Miami, making it a staging area for ships headed to Miami with an early arrival time the next day.  For this reason, Royal Caribbean also has an island here- Little Stirrup Caye - separated from Great Stirrup Caye by only a few hundred yards.

As we passed it, we saw that two of their big ships were already docked, and some passengers were already taking a tethered hot air balloon ride.

Ah, if only we could dock. Unfortunately, our island is only accessible to us via launches. 

EIVIERA was swinging on her anchor shortly after 8:00 a.m. We enjoyed our breakfast while the anxious passengers, eager to get ashore, did so. At about 11:00, we boarded a launch for the 10-minute ride ashore. 

When we boarded the launch, almost everyone was facing aft. Curious until we realized that our fellow passengers assumed the wheelhouse was in the bows of the boat.  Landlubbers!  Soon after we started moving, almost all of them swiveled in place. There were, of course, one or two who played it cool, "What, you didn't know that was the front of the boat.  You dummy.   I wanted to face backward."

Our launch resembled a landing craft.  Sure enough, when we arrived at the pier, the entire bow lowered and unfolded, allowing people to disembark three abreast.

As we set our backpacks on beach chairs, someone next to us said they had been watching zipliners. This planted the seed. 

A short time later, I found myself signing up for the Osprey zipline. According to the write-up that I found, once we got back on the ship, "You start off 130 feet in the air and fly 110 feet. That will get your heart pumping. Then slightly lower, but longer flights, to taste the experience fully."

It was a total of three flights and a lot of fun. 

After ascending a lighthouse-looking structure and getting hooked up, the first flight was relatively short with a drop of perhaps 20 feet. This launch platform had a nice sense of mass to it.

The second platform consisted of just three poles supporting metal grates.  Its openness was definitely not for anyone afraid of heights. It was comforting to always be attached to a cable or safety line with one or more clamps, but I still held onto something at every opportunity.  Thankfully, it was not breezy.

On the second flight, I stopped just a bit short of the landing pad, so I had to swivel around 180 degrees and hand over my way onto it. I talked to someone else who had done the zipline today, and they said the same thing happened to her. The break for that station was set a little too hard or tripped too early. The other zipliner and I agreed that it just added to the adventure. 

The third flight returned me to the lighthouse at ground level.

Back at the beach after wandering around, we were grateful that the vast majority of the beach chairs were empty.  Yesterday, the beach was reportedly mobbed.  At the zipline, they told me that they'd had only 6 people so far today; yesterday, they had 200. It all depends on what ships are there on any given day.

We swam, had lunch, and sunbathed until after 3:00, then headed back to RIVIERA. There was no opportunity for launch passengers to sit facing the wrong way this time; the benches ran fore-and-aft rather than athwartships. 

Soon after 5:00, RIVIERA hoisted her anchor and pointed her bows toward Miami.