Thursday, January 8, continued… Keith got ready to go snorkeling. Eric and Keith went to the ranger station to check in. Christi stayed behind to make lunch and dinner. Tiki Tour had also moved from Shroud to Warderick this morning and had moored in The Horseshoe. The Tiki crew and their guests — a family with two kids close in age to Keith — met Eric and Keith at the beach by the ranger station. The kids played on the beach. After a couple of hours, Eric returned to Kosmos to eat lunch and to pick Christi up. Keith said he wasn’t hungry and asked to stay with the other kids.
At about 1600, Eric and Christi returned. They found the group snorkeling in the pass.
The snorkelers saw a group of twelve spotted eagle rays and they followed the rays for quite a while. They said the rays were amazing. From the dinghy, all Christi and Eric could see were black blobs that looked like moving rocks.
Once the rays vanished, everyone got out of the water and went back to our respective boats for dinner. Here was the dusk.
Freya had arrived in The Horseshoe while the group was snorkeling. Tiki invited us and Freya to hang out at their boat in the evening. Eric and Keith went, but Christi was tired and wanted to go to bed early. The kids played cards and had fun. The adults talked and had fun. Christi took advantage of the quiet time alone to sit outside and stargaze for a while. The moon hadn’t risen yet, so the stars were especially vibrant.
On Friday, we woke up to 24-knots of wind. We were rocking and rolling in the anchorage. We looked outside and saw a squall was coming towards us.
Kosmos was getting salty and was in need of a good rinse down, so we were glad rain was coming. However, when the squall hit us, we only got a light drizzle, so there wasn’t enough water to rinse off the salt. The storm passed relatively quickly. Here was the tiny bit of sunrise that we could see through the storm clouds.
After the storm passed, there was a rainbow.
We forgot to mention that while we were in Palm Cay Marina, Eric had assembled a new flopper stopper. Our current flopper stoppers were V shaped, and this new one was shaped like a Venetian blind. He’d only bought one because they were expensive and he wanted to see if the Venetian blind style was really worth the money before he invested in a second one. He’d bought it before we left San Diego, and we’ve been carrying it around for over a year now.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been using our flopper stoppers a lot. Eric has been wanting to assemble the new one for a while now, but he wanted to assemble it someplace calm. Palm Cay Marina was the flat calm location that he’d been wanting to work in.
This morning, while Keith and Christi were doing school, Eric attached and deployed the new flopper stopper. The slats opened and closed in the water, creating resistance that slowed the boat’s roll. It seemed to work better than the V shaped ones.
After lunch, Eric and Keith went to shore to meet Tiki Tour. There was a girl from a boat named Bogumilia there, too, and she fit in well with the group. Today, the kids focused on burying one another in the sand.
At 1500, Eric picked Christi up and took her to the beach. Shortly after she made it to shore, Bogumilia, Tiki, Eric and Keith all went snorkeling together. They saw seven spotted eagle rays. Eric got close enough to a turtle that he could have touched it, and he followed it around for a while.
Meanwhile, Christi enjoyed dry land time. She talked to a group of Russian tourists for a while, which was interesting. When they were done snorkeling, everyone went back to their respective boats for the evening. We got the dinghy up and worked on getting the boat ready to go to sea in the morning. Here was the sunset and dusk.
