On Monday, December 29, 2025, we got to see half the sunrise before a cloud covered up the rest of the show. This was taken just as the cloud began to descend.
We haven’t been in “civilization” since December 17, and our trash has been accumulating. We had put a full trash bag out in the cockpit a few days ago. When Christi went out to take the sunrise photos, she saw that the entire cockpit was covered in maggots. She told Eric about the problem and the two of them bagged the trash up into a sturdier bag and made sure it was really secure so no more maggots could escape, then cleaned up all the maggots in the cockpit. Ugh. It was not a fun start to the day.
The other families went snorkeling at some nearby cave this morning. Since Christi and Eric had gotten to morning chores late thanks to the maggots, one of the other families took Keith with them. Christi and Eric were surprised at how fast they returned. Keith said the caves were small and there was nothing interesting to see in them. One of Keith’s fins was broken, and he hadn’t brought the working fin along. Keith complained that snorkeling without fins had left him extra tired and tried to weasel out of school work. Christi and Eric compromised by reducing the amount of schoolwork he had to do for the day.
At 1300, the kids from Zimovia came over so that Eric and Keith could teach them the basics of D & D. At 1500, they wrapped up D & D and went back to Rachel’s Bubble Bath with some of the other families. Christi couldn’t join them as she was in the middle of baking. The waves were bigger today, and the Bubble Bath was more fun in the bigger waves. Two of the adults lost their glasses when they were pushed under by a wave – one found them, one didn’t. Eric had brought along his snorkeling gear this time and tried to find the lost pair, but had no luck. Eric reported that there were quite a few small fish, some interesting rocks and a little bit of coral under the water.
In the evening, the kids from Tiki Tour and Zimovia came over for a game of D & D. This was the dusk.
On Tuesday, Christi woke up before the first light of dawn. This was another anchorage with zero light pollution, and the stars were magical.
The wind was about to shift to be from the west, so we all needed to move as this anchorage had no west-wind protection. There actually weren’t many anchorages in this area that had west-wind protection, so the choices were limited. The flotilla split — some decided to go to Between the Majors so they could celebrate the new year in civilization and the rest chose a remote anchorage about 5-miles northwest of Staniel Cay.
We needed some groceries and we really, really needed to get the trash off the boat. We knew from other cruisers who were currently at Staniel Cay that the supply ships had apparently stopped running for the holidays and the stores in Staniel were completely empty.
After much debate, we decided to go to Blackpoint because we believed we’d be able to get groceries there since there weren’t nearly as many cruisers in Blackpoint as Staniel. While the anchorage didn’t really have great west protection, Eric thought it would be sheltered enough that it would only be mildly uncomfortable with the flopper stoppers out. Once Eric and Keith were up, we all worked on getting Kosmos ready to go to sea. We pulled up anchor at 0800. We were a little nervous because we were uncomfortably close to a shallow area and the boat ahead of us was really close to our anchor, so there wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver if we got too close to the other boat. But all went fine with lifting the anchor and we’d worried for nothing.
We took the inside route (the left line). The line on the right comes into the story later. The current was very strong, but that was a good thing since we were going with the current. We arrived at 1100.
When we anchored, the wind was just beginning to shift. The anchorage was a little rolly, but it wasn’t bad. We got the dinghy down and went to shore.
As we approached the public dock, Eric determined that it wasn’t safe to leave the dinghy there as waves were crashing onto it that could push the dinghy up against the dock and potentially smash it up. He decided to dock at Lorraine’s instead. As we were starting to pull in, a small speed boat with huge engines that was full of tourists pulled up. They made it clear they’d run us over if we didn’t get out of their way. Another cruiser had told us that the tour boats have package deals that include lunch at the restaurants here. We were pretty sure that the tourists were going to have lunch at Lorraine’s, and that Lorraine’s wouldn’t have let us block the tour group from utilizing their dock.
We moved on to the dock at Emerald Sunset. Emerald Sunset’s dock was the worst of all in terms of risk to the dinghy. We looked at the beach next to Emerald Sunset. The waves were too big; we’d never be able to launch the dinghy back off the beach. As we were going back towards the public dock, we saw a second tourist boat was trying to pull in to Lorraine’s dock. The first boat had moved out of their way, and the second boat was seriously struggling to get close enough to the dock to tie up.
We decided to scope out the beach on the northwest end of the public dock. We were pleased to see that the way the beach was angled made it a natural shelter against the worst of the waves, so we’d be able to launch the dinghy okay. The beach was rocky, but we had a hard dinghy, so rocks were manageable. The tide was coming in, so Eric put out the anchor so the dinghy wouldn’t float away as the tide came up.
The first order of business was a restaurant meal. Christi was thrilled to get a break from cooking. We stopped by Deshamon’s, who said they had a private group coming and wouldn’t be open for the public until 1700. Both of the Lorraine’s were packed with the two tour groups. We stopped by her mom’s house and bought a couple loaves of bread, then went to Emerald Sunset.
It was a little chilly sitting outside on the deck in the breeze. Christi wished she’d brought a sweater. While we were waiting for our food, we saw that the swell was increasing. We knew it would continued to worsen and that it would be an uncomfortable night. We talked about moving. Eric checked the tides and figured out that if we returned to Kosmos soon enough, we’d be able to make it back to our friends at the anchorage 5-miles northwest of Staniel before dark. The alternative plan would be to go to an anchorage 2-miles away.
After we ordered, a tourist group pulled up to the dock. They were escorted to a buffet area that we were unaware existed. As we were leaving, we asked the waiter how much the buffet was and found out it was $30 per person. Since a burger and fries was more than $30, we were sure the buffet was significantly better value for the money than a la carte.
We went to the market next to Deshamon’s. We were relieved to see they have the items that we desperately needed in stock: eggs and toilet paper. The credit card machine wasn’t working as the internet was down, but fortunately, we had enough cash to buy what we needed. Upon arrival back at the beach, a local man told us that our dinghy had been bashing against some rocks, so he pulled it up for us. We thanked him for saving our dinghy.
As we approached Kosmos, we saw she was bucking like a wild bronco. We unloaded the groceries and immediately pulled up the dinghy. The dinghy was swinging wildly, and Eric nearly fell multiple times while trying to hold it steady. As we pulled the dinghy up, we saw there was damage to the bottom, including scrapes and multiple depressions. Thank goodness it hadn’t sprung a leak!
We managed to get the dinghy secured, then immediately pulled up anchor and left. Because of the odd wind direction, it was actually calmer in the ocean than it was in the reef. We went out a pass that was very narrow (the image of the pass was blocked by the big icon on the map above) and took the ocean back north (the right line on the map).
This ride in the ocean was uneventful, but entering the pass was scary. This pass was also narrow, and the current was going so fast that it made the auto-pilot not work properly. Eric had to hand steer in through the pass.
Once inside, it was not far to where our friends were grouped together. We looked for a spot amongst them, but the area that was deep enough for us was long and skinny, and we didn’t think any of the spots had enough space to swing. So we went into a small nook a little ways north of them. When we set the anchor, we dragged a little before the anchor caught and set. We were so relieved we were alone. Had we been with the other boats, we could have come close to crashing!
Photo of the group taken from where we’d anchored.
And a photo of the pass we’d entered through, also taken from where we were anchored. The island on the right was an eco-friendly resort. We were surprised the windmills weren’t on since it was windy.
We immediately got the dinghy down. Christi and Eric dropped Keith off at one of the boats where all the children had congregated, then went to a different boat to join the other adults. The current was really strong where they’d anchored and the current was pushing them against the wind. Kosmos must have been more sheltered from the current in her little nook because Kosmos was pointing into the wind while everyone else was turned around.
There was a lot of fast boat traffic in this channel, and the boats came closer to them than they did to Kosmos. Given the current and traffic, we decided that Kosmos was in the better spot.
We hung out until sunset, then everyone headed back to their own boats for dinner. We ate leftovers and had a quiet night aboard. A shower passed over us and we got a much needed rinse down.