Dawn on Wednesday, May 7

After school and morning chores, we went snorkeling with the other families. Only the adults and some of the older kids came; most of the kids skipped it. Christi forgot her camera, and since the photos from snorkeling in Little Bell Cay and hadn’t come out, we decided not to make a special trip back to Kosmos to retrieve it.

Since the current was so strong, we started with a drift snorkel through the pass at the south end of Warderick Wells (the pass is visible in the first photo). It was a nice snorkeling spot, with a decent amount of coral — though not particularly colorful — and quite a few fish. The nice thing about drift snorkels is that not much effort is exerted swimming, but the downside was, with the current so strong, we moved through the reef really fast and didn’t get to take it all in. 

Then we took the dinghies over to the three little islands to the south of Warderick Wells (visible in the second photo above). We snorkeled all the way around the middle island. This was the best snorkel spot that we’ve been to in the Bahamas yet. There was a lot of coral and several varieties. We saw two lionfish, lots of fat red starfish, lots of angel and butterfly fish, lots of conch, and so much more. We were bummed that we didn’t have the camera.

Afterwards, we all went back to our respective boats to clean up and eat dinner. After dinner, we the parents went over to one of the boats for the evening to socialize. The kids went to a different boat and played games. We were out unusually late.

Since we went to bed late, on Thursday, we were tired and moving slow. We got Kosmos ready to go to sea and pulled up anchor at around 0930. The blue dot at the bottom was where we left from and the purple dot under the words “Shroud Cay” was our end destination.

Shroud Cay was also part of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. We arrived a little after noon. We were the first to arrive. The other three families dropped anchor around us shortly after. Like most of the anchorages we’ve been to in the Bahamas, it was stunningly beautiful.

Unfortunately, the anchorage was rolly. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable, either. Christi was tired from the late night and took a nap. Eric went snorkeling in the little estuary that we were anchored near with some of the other adults. The snorkeling wasn’t good there, but they did see a lemon shark (which were harmless to humans).

Keith went hot dogging with all of the other kids.

After they finished with hot dogging, we saw a tiger shark swimming around the anchorage. 

In the evening, the four families got together again on one of the boats. Everyone had a great time.

Sunset