Thursday, March 13 — In the early morning, before dawn began, the full moon looked like a spotlight

The sunrise was beautiful

The waves had indeed shifted, but it was still rolly. Eric deployed the second flopper stopper, which helped quite a bit with dampening the motion. After school and chores, Eric and Christi jumped in and cleaned the waterline. The water was surprisingly cool, and Christi put on a shortie wetsuit.

The waterline was totally covered with a thick grass that was difficult to remove. Fortunately, Eric had purchased a waterproof electric scrubbing tool that made the task much easier, but hand scrubbing was still necessary.

After finishing the waterline, Christi was pooped and not up for doing the bottom. Eric donned underwater gear and inspected the bottom to see how bad it was. All in all, the growth wasn’t too bad, but there were a couple of concerning things. Something that looked like a cloth was wrapped around the wing engine’s propellor. When Eric removed it, he thought maybe it was some kind of large seaweed and not cloth. He also saw a small line stuck in the main propellor. The line was shredded up, so it probably was not slowing us down too much. Eric also saw rays in the water.

Yesterday, we’d made reservations at a highly rated, unique restaurant. Walk-ins were not allowed, and reservations must be made at least one day in advance. The owner/chef, Rodney, discussed with us which foods we did and didn’t like. He would make us a surprise meal based on what ingredients were available. The restaurant was located in the estuary. Here was a view of the estuary as we approached it from our dinghy.

There was a negative low tide making it extra shallow, and we had to carefully navigate to avoid getting stuck on the sand. 

One of the things we haven’t mentioned is that we haven’t seen any birds here in the Bahamas. We think this is the first bird we’ve seen — and it was so interesting.

The estuary was huge. This was looking back at the anchorage from the north end of the estuary.

And we had to go a long ways east to get to our destination.

At this point we were not far from the dinghy dock next to the restaurant — this shot is looking back at what we’d already traversed.

It took a lot longer to get there than we’d estimated and we were a half-hour late. The restaurant was cute. The seating area was a screened in porch and the kitchen was a fully enclosed building behind the porch.

The food was good. Eric and Christi were served grouper, Keith got chicken. Both were served with coleslaw and beans and rice. A salad was included in the meal, too. The portions were generous.

Rodney chatted with us for a while. He was a retired school teacher who grew up going fishing from that boat ramp/dock. His dad had always wanted to build a restaurant near the dock, and Rodney did it in his dad’s honor. He shared this song with us, which he wrote and recorded.

Before getting back in the dinghy, we walked around on land for a few minutes. This was pretty much the scenery for the entire walk.

On the dinghy ride back to the anchorage, Christi wished she’d brought a sweater. The Bahamas was at a higher latitude than our last few destinations, and much cooler, with temperatures in the 70s Fahrenheit. Now that she was acclimated to hot weather, Christi was kind of cold in the more temperate, but still warm, weather. Also on the ride back, our bottomless pit announced that he was still hungry, so we went to the resort that was visible from the anchorage for another meal.

The views from inside the restaurant were lovely.

Eric ordered conch fritters, which were deep fried balls of dough with tiny pieces of conch (a type of shellfish) mixed into the batter. They were delicious.

Keith had been serious about being hungry. He ate that entire huge burger.

The sunset was beautiful

As soon as we walked out the restaurant door, we were attacked by mosquitos. The swarm of mosquitos aggressively followed us to the dinghy and continued to attack the entire ride back to Kosmos. Here is a photo of Keith with a bunch of mosquitoes on the left side of his face. He’d had just as many on the other side, too, but had swatted them away just before the photo was snapped.

Here was a nice shot of Kosmos from the dinghy as we approached her.

The moon full was again amazingly colorful and luminous.