Friday, March 21 — The Nordhavn 68 in this photo was named Stella Luna, and we got this great shot of her under the brightly glowing, half-full luna at dawn.

Like yesterday, the wind was low and the bay was calm, so after we finished school and chores, we headed out to go snorkeling with some other families. Our rendezvous spot was at the southwestern tip of Stocking island.

As we had briefly mentioned back in December, we (relatively) recently upgraded our dinghy. We’d had a Gig Harbor hard shell sailing/rowing dinghy with a Torqueedo 503 electric motor with 1.5 horsepower. We also had 50-watt solar panels to charge the motor when we had it out, which were made by Torqueedo. We were very happy with those solar panels.

We now have an OC Tender with a Torqueedo Travel electric motor with 3 horsepower. This time we bought generic 150-watt solar panels. Sometimes the solar panels do a great job of charging, though they seem to only charge 50 – 60 watts. Other times, they charge poorly or don’t charge at all, even in circumstances that are ideal for charging. Eric has not figured out why they are so inconsistent in performance.

We brought this up because we were going to be out for a long time and potentially doing a long ride. Eric was worried about having a full battery, so he had brought the motor inside last night to plug it in, in order to ensure that it was fully charged this morning.

The rendezvous spot was beautiful, but very shallow. It took careful navigation to get to shore. Here it was from the distance.

We also took a selfie at the same time we took the above photo, so this was the view the other direction.

Here is a short video of the channel, taken from the spot where we landed the dinghy. Sadly, we didn’t get lucky enough to capture any breaking waves coming in from the Atlantic.

Keith standing next to the dinghy, for perspective.

Some of the families were late, so we waited tat the point for quite a while. While we didn’t swim (others did), we waded in the water. We found it a bit chilly. The other boaters mentioned that the water was the coldest this time of year. Eric spent some time under the little shelter on the beach.

When everyone finally arrived, we all drove over to the moorings that had been laid near the reef so that people could tie up their dinghies.

The water was much colder here. Immediately after jumping in, Christi decided that the reef hadn’t looked good enough to justify being cold and got right back in the dinghy without doing any snorkeling. Eric and Keith were only in for a few minutes before they were cold and got out. They only saw a couple of fish and the coral wasn’t colorful.  

After we finished snorkeling, we decided that we wanted pizza. We headed to Kosmos, quickly showered, then headed into George Town. The building the pizza place was in was right by the dinghy dock and very easy to spot, though the restaurant itself wasn’t so obvious.

Sadly, the pizza place was closed for a few days. We got burgers, instead, at the restaurant across the street, called Island Boy Cafe. We were all wearing shorts and flip flops. We sat outside, enjoying the lovely day.

The food was good, but the service was really slow, and we were there for a long time. We’d suspected while we were there that we may have gotten bitten, and were horrified when we got into the dinghy to see that our legs were totally covered with bug bites. Since it wasn’t near dusk, and we hadn’t seen or heard any bugs, we figured they must be noseeums. We’ve vowed to only wear pants to George Town from now on.

Saturday was a mellow day. We laid low at the boat until mid-afternoon, then went to Chat N Chill Beach. Eric and Keith played D & D while Christi visited with the parents. We usually see a lot of manta rays around that beach, but they were hard to photograph as they just look like rocks in the photos. Christi finally took a video.

After the beach, we had a quiet evening aboard. The sunset was interesting — the sun itself was almost completely blocked by that big gray cloud to the left, but some of the other clouds turned pink anyways.