18.01.07

deutsche Version

Our QTH:

The Cay Sal Bank is a group of 96 islands, located about 50 miles South of the Florida Keys. They are uninhabitated without any kind of facilities. The sea level is just a few meters which makes it quite difficult to reach. You can even walk between a few islands. Good weather is mandatory as well as a calm sea. Even so the Cay Sal Bank is pretty close to the Florida Keys, we need to go an indirect route via Bimini to clear the customs. However, we will go there to receive our stamp in the passport, clear customs and then go directly to NA-219. This detour of about 100 miles costs us quite some money and time but it's necessary to land there legally.

Cay Sal Bank    Bahamas

Up to now the only activity on NA-219 was in October 2000 operated by W5BOS/C6A. Lanny was for a few hours QRV from the "Dog Rocks". Unfortunately, he had to cut the DXpedition early due to bad weather. Another DXpedition was planned in 2004, yet this too, was canceled due to bad weather. This now made the Cay Sal Bank ranking very high in the Most Wanted IOTAs. The evaluation in April 2004 named NA-219 on place 14 (of NA) and 73 world wide. Only 7% of the island hunter declared this IOTA as confirmed. However, in recent years there have been quite a lot of nice DXpeditions to very rare islands, and still none to the Cay Sal Bank so it could be even higher on the Most Wanted.