When we woke up on Tuesday, March 25, we saw that the storm had not hit yet. It was an unusual dawn, with the colors darker than normal.

Eric checked the forecast; the storm was still on its way, and now it was supposed to be even bigger than what had been predicted yesterday. The barge was still there, too. On the radio net, someone said the barge was waiting for a tow boat to come rescue them.

It was the hottest and most humid day that we’ve had in the Bahamas. It was so hot that we broke down and turned on the AC – it was the first time that we’d run it since arriving in the Bahamas. 

Eric was still hesitant to turn the Zeus back on. He decided to only turn the power on, and didn’t run it. The first thing it did was demand a software update in order to operate.

When Eric went to update it, it said it already had the latest update. Eric confirmed it had been set to the correct configuration. Eric sent the settings to the technician that he had spoken with yesterday. No response as of yet.

As the day progressed, the forecasts changed. One of the forecasts said the storm wouldn’t come at all. The others each gave different times that it would hit. It seemed that everyone was hunkered down. Usually there were lots of dinghies buzzing around, but today we saw little dinghy traffic. The barge was gone by the late afternoon, and we hadn’t seen them leave.

The storm never came. We were frustrated that we’d wasted the day stuck onboard. The sunset was mostly obscured by the clouds. 

Shortly after sunset, we saw a little lightning in the distance. Eric and Christi were woken up at 0100 by a super loud crack of lightning/thunder. It was raining hard and quite windy. But the storm passed relatively quickly, and by dawn, it was clear with low wind. The updated forecast for Wednesday was that it would be calm and sunny during the day, with less humidity and cooler temperatures than yesterday. The next storm was supposed hit during the wee hours of the morning.

We rushed through morning chores and school so that we could get to shore as soon as possible. As we were getting ready to go, fellow Nordhavn owner, Brian from Honu Kai, stopped by to say hi. We talked him into joining us for lunch. 🙂

We decided on The Rusty Anchor, which was on Great Exuma Island a little ways south of Lake Victoria (see map posted yesterday). Brian offered to drive us in his dinghy since ours was so slow. As mentioned yesterday, the buildings to the south were high end. As we zoomed by, we noted that some of them were definitely private houses; others we couldn’t tell if they were giant houses, small condo complexes, or small hotels.

Before going to the restaurant, we made a small detour to see the bridge between Great Exuma Island and Crab Cay (at the bottom of the map posted yesterday). Brian told us that a builder was apparently going to build a housing complex on Crab Cay, and the government required the bridge to have enough clearance that the local fishing boats could pass underneath. The builder created this lovely bridge that looked like it belonged on a European canal.

Apparently, only a few homes were built on Crab Cay, and then the builder abandoned the project. We zoomed back over to the dinghy dock and tied up. This development was called February Point. We walked past a few of the buildings to The Beach Club, which was a condo complex.

The Rusty Anchor was on the ground floor of the complex, near the pool, with stunning ocean views. Inside, it felt like we were in the middle of a Tommy Bahama store, but with tables instead of clothing racks.

Eric ordered the conch chowder. The conch was chopped into tiny pieces and was tender. It was served with a coconut biscuit, which was slightly sweet. Eric liked both.

As we were leaving the dock after lunch, we saw a turtle swimming around Brian’s dinghy!

Almost as soon as we returned to Kosmos, Eric and Keith left again to go to Chat N Chill Beach for a D & D session. After they returned to Kosmos, we got the dinghy up in preparation for the next storm that was coming. The sunset was partly obscured by the clouds, but still had some dramatic colors.