Dawn on Saturday, December 27

We forgot to mention that one of the chores that Eric had done a few days ago was change the generator oil. Today he put away the tools. Eric frequently says that in boat maintenance, getting everything out and putting it all away again often took longer than the task itself. Eric also spent some time in the morning trying to figure out why the air conditioner in the salon mysteriously stopped working. He cleaned the sea strainer and checked the oils, but didn’t see a problem.

Today the wind was dead and the seas were completely calm. Here was our flopper stopper.

And the anchor chain.

We’d neglected to mention that a couple more boats had joined the flotilla between Shorud and Warderick Wells, and we were up to (we think) 10 boats. Today four of the boats left the flotilla as they had commitments in other places. One of the remaining boats suggested that we move to a relatively narrow channel surrounded by sandbars that was close by. She’s said it wasn’t a “real” anchorage as it was completely exposed, but argued that we should take advantage of having no wind to go to a place where we normally wouldn’t be able to go. She talked everyone into it.

The catamarans all left right away, at 0900. Their plan was to head directly south, but that route was too shallow for us. We picked a more roundabout, but deeper path where we went north, around to the east side of Warderick Wells, and then back south to the sandbar. Even this route was shallower than we were comfortable with, so we waited to leave until around 1100, when the tide was higher.

Since we had some time to kill, we decided to check out the little island that we were anchored near (pictured above). We’d heard it was a decent snorkeling spot, but we didn’t feel like snorkeling, so we just scoped it out in the dinghy. We circled the island and only saw a turtle and a starfish — no fish of any kind. Nor did we notice any coral. But often, coral and coral reef fish weren’t visible from the surface — you often had to put your face in the water to see them. We did find a boat hook, though! Eric used the dinghy anchor as a claw and pulled it up.

After the dinghy ride, we brought the dinghy up and got Kosmos ready to go to sea. The ride took 2 hours and was picturesque.

Here were a couple shots of Warderick Wells, the first from the west side of The Horseshoe and the second from the north side, which was the entrance to The Horseshoe.

And a shot of Hall Pond’s Cay.

As we pulled into the channel and prepared to anchor, we saw that the rest of the group was coming back in their dinghies from a nearby snorkel spot. The ground where we anchored was rockier than we would have preferred, but we managed to set the anchor on the first try. Since the water was so calm and clear, we were able to see that the anchor really had set in sand and was not caught on a rock.

Not long after we anchored, one of the boats invited us over to play games. Eric and Keith went, but Christi stayed onboard to cook dinner. In the evening, the adults and some of the older teens went for a sunset walk along one of the sandbars. Here was the view of the boats anchored in the channel.

The sandbar had quite a bit of foliage, so it must not get fully submerged, even at high tide.

The walk around the little “island” was nice, but fairly short since it was small.

There were a lot of conch dotting the sand. Since we were in the park, they were protected and seemed to be flourishing here.

One of the park rules was that planes were required to fly low. This afternoon/evening, there was a lot of small plane traffic, and having them fly so low was a bit disconcerting. The other cruisers mentioned that Johnny Depp lived on one of the surrounding islands and speculated that maybe he was bringing in guests for a big party. We watched the sunset.

Shortly after sunset, we all headed back to our boats. The photo below was the same location as the photo above — that was how fast the ride was going out!

Keith was still playing at the boat that he’d gone to earlier in the day. Eric and Christi picked him up on their way back to Kosmos. Keith reported that his glasses had fallen overboard, and one of the kids heroically jumped into the water and rescued Keith’s glasses for him. Thank you, Dean! We are grateful!

We had a quiet night aboard.