Sunrise on Sunday, May 4

This morning, Eric put away all the dive gear. We keep the dive compressor and dive gear off to the side in our lazarette. The last few days, he’s had to twist in weird boat-yoga angles in order to access the gear, fill tanks the tanks, and now stow the dive gear. Eric’s back wasn’t feeling good, and his jaw/gums were still a bit sore.

Once the dive gear was stowed, we got the dinghy up and got Kosmos ready for sea. We lifted anchor at 1100. Our next destination was called Little Bell Cay. As the crow flies, it was a fairly short ride. However, due to shallow water, we couldn’t simply pull into the anchorage via the shortest route. We had to follow a relatively narrow channel south of the island, take the east side up to the northern tip, and enter via another narrow challenge on the north.

The seas were calm and it was a pleasant ride, though much of the route was through shallower water than Eric was comfortable with. As we crossed the southern pass, we were only 1.4 miles away from our destination. Visually, it looked like we could just pull in next to the other boats, and it felt almost ironic that we had to trek another 4.7 miles, nearly circling the island, in order to get to that spot 1.4 miles away.

This photo was zoomed out, with the anchorage to the left and the pass to the right. Even the pass had a shallow spot that we had to be wary of.

This was the view on the north side. Again, it looked like a boat could slide through between the islands ahead, but it was too shallow.

Once we got a little farther, we saw the last turn south into the anchorage itself. The boat to the left in the photo was anchored inside.

The anchorage was lovely. We dropped anchor at about 1400 in a great spot. We were delighted that it was totally calm.

Little Bell Cay was part of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. We knew there was a fee to be in the marine park, but we had no idea how to pay it. 

Oceananigans was in the anchorage, along with two other families. We could see the families were hanging out at the beach, so we went over to the beach to join them. We hung out with them for a couple of hours before retreating back to our respective boats for dinner. Here was the sun setting behind the tiny islands on the west side of the anchorage.