Sunday, January 25 — Christi needed to fly to San Diego to take care of “life chores.” Most cruisers flew in and out of Georgetown for a slew of good reasons. However, we opted for Staniel Cay because it had better logistics for our tentative cruising plans. A large numbers of families were planning to start another flotilla to go to the Ragged Islands at about the same time that Christi needed to be in San Diego. Eric was planning to go to the Raggeds with them.

Now we know that there was a channel that was deep enough for us to get to the Raggeds from Georgetown, but at the time we booked the flight (when we were in Nassau), we thought that the only channels deep enough were via Staniel and Long Island. If Christi flew out of Georgetown, Eric and Keith would either have to go back north towards Staniel to a cut out to the ocean, or they’d have to go south around Long Island. Either way, it added a lot of extra miles. To minimize mileage, we’d chosen to book the flight out of/in to Staniel. Eric and Keith would drop Christi off at Staniel, join the other families in the Raggeds, then leave a little early to pick her back up when she returned. 

Yesterday morning, five family boats left for the Raggeds, as planned. However, the rest of the group bowed out since it looked like the weather was not going to be good. The anchorages apparently weren’t very well protected from the direction that the winds were forecast to come from, so if the forecast was accurate, it would be two weeks of uncomfortable anchorages.

Since we hated rolly anchorages, Eric and Keith bowed out, too. Eric decided the best place to ride out the coming weather was in Georgetown. We looked into changing Christi’s flight to/from Georgetown, but the airline we’d booked with, Makers Air, didn’t fly into Georgetown. 

So this morning at 1030, we pulled up anchor to make a 4-hour trip north to Staniel to drop off Christi, then tomorrow Eric and Keith would make a 10-hour trip back south to Georgetown. It was ironic that they added an extra 8-hours of total transit time to their trip to Georgetown when the whole reason we didn’t book Georgetown in the first place was to shave off those extra hours from the trip to the Raggeds. And, of course, they were going to have to make the 10-hour trip back north to pick Christi up. 

After SCUBA diving yesterday, Eric had rinsed all the gear and left it all in the cockpit to dry, intending to put it away this morning. This morning, a small squall came through that brought a quick, hard rain. In good news, the hard rain gave us a pretty good boat washing. In bad news, it made all the gear wet. We didn’t want to put it away wet, as it was likely to mold, so we just left it all in the cockpit for the passage.

Eric took the same course out of Rudder that we’d taken in. Here is another shot of the channel, and it was equally narrow on the other side. Being that close to the shallows was nerve wracking!

The trip to Staniel/Big Majors was uneventful. We anchored over by Pig Beach, near a boat called Two Good. We immediately got the dinghy down and went to shore to drop off the trash and eat at the yacht club for lunch.

While waiting for our food, we scoped out the docks. Most cruisers took their dinghies from the anchorage to the airport, but we were hoping to just take Kosmos to a dock to save the time/hassle of dealing with the dinghy. After looking at the options, we decided the marina was the superior place to drop Christi off. At the moment, a large end-tie was open. We could slide up, Christi could quickly jump off without tying up, and Kosmos could pull right back out. If a boat took that spot between now and then, the back up plan would be to drop Christi at the fuel dock. The fuel dock was taller, thus Christi would need to use the ladder to get off, which would make carrying the suitcase a bit tricker. But they’d be dropping her off at 0700, and the fuel dock didn’t open until 0800, so it was unlikely a boat would be docked there. We were feeling good about having what appeared to be a workable drop off plan.

After lunch, we rushed back to the anchorage to make it back before dark. Something about the name Two Good had piqued Eric’s interest, and he looked them up on a boating app we used called No Foreign Land. The owners of Two Good were friends of ours! They used to own Three at Sea, a Nordhavn 43. We’d met them when they came through San Diego. They’d raised their daughter onboard, and Christi and Eric had relied on them heavily for advice on homeschooling/adapting a child to boat life when we made those transitions with Keith. Their daughter was an incredible person, so we wanted to follow what they did to make sure Keith turned out great, too.

Before returning to Kosmos, we stopped by to say hi to Two Good. It was wonderful to see them again and catch up. As much as we complained about how hard it was to leave friends behind in the cruising life, an upside is that sometimes you find them again. A shark joined the party.

Here was the dusk.