The dawn on Monday, March 9 was colorful, and even though the moon was only half full, it was still especially vibrant:

After Christi and Keith finished doing school, we took the dinghy to Staniel Cay. We went to the pink grocery store and picked up a few items. We wanted to get a bottle of alcohol, and had been told the best place to buy it was at the Yacht Club’s laundromat. Eric went around to a small building set back from the shore on the Yacht Club’s property and saw a faded sign that said “Laundromat and (unreadable) Liquor.”

Inside, along with the washing machines and dryers, were cases of beer stacked up.

The harder stuff was in a room in the back. It was apparently called the Liquor Mat.

We had lunch at the Yacht Club with Driftwood. It was a nice visit with them. On our way out, Eric noticed that in the gift shop adjacent to the restaurant, the same bottle of liquor that he’d just bought was significantly more expensive than it was at the Liquormat.

After returning to Kosmos, we quickly got her ready to go to sea and pulled up anchor. There was a lot of sea grass on the chain, so lifting went slowly since Christi needed to keep stopping to pick out the grass. We again had trouble with the swivel. We don’t think we’ve mentioned this yet… we’ve noticed a trick that seems to work with our swivel problem. Often, when the anchor was muddy, Eric would back the boat up when the anchor chain was almost all the way up, but the anchor is just below the surface. The force from the water rushing by the anchor usually removed the mud. The backing up trick seemed to be working for getting the sand out of the swivel, too, so we’re doing that now to get the anchor to set properly when its pulled in.

We set off for an anchorage on the northwest side of Pipe Cay. We didn’t mark the spot since it’s pretty obvious on this satellite map that there was only one tiny area that was deep enough for us.

It was a quick ride, taking only about 1.5 hours. The anchorage was lovely, with tiny islands on two sides and an enticing beach on the third side.

While the anchorage was comfortable most of the time, it did get rolly during high tide. We suspect that, like at Shroud Cay, during the high tides, the tiny islands were more submerged and didn’t block the swell as much as they did when the tide was lower. Eric put out the port side paravane to help mitigate the motion. There were also a lot of flies in that anchorage. We were pretty far offshore, so we had no idea where they’d come from. 

Traveler, Tangent and Driftwood had also come to Pipe Cay. In the evening, the four families got together onboard Traveler, along with another couple that was in the anchorage. The women played cards while the men talked boats and the kids played D &D. It was a fun night. Here was Kosmos in the dusk.