Just before the sunrise on Friday, January 23

A popular tourist attraction in the area was a statue of a mermaid about to play a piano that David Cooperfield had sunk for an activity for his resort guests. After Christi and Keith finished school, Eric and Keith snorkeled the statue with Bogumilia.  

We’d read that the statue was hard to see while snorkeling because it was kind of deep, and they recommended going at low tide, when it was only about 10-feet down, for the best views. While they could see it, it was tough. Low tide meant a strong current, and it took a lot of strength to stay in place over the statue in order to get a good look at it. From what they could see, it appeared the statue was a 1:1 scale of a person and a grand piano.

Given how strenuous the swim was, snorkeling didn’t last long. After they finished, Eric, Christi and Keith went to the beach in the little cove. Eric snorkeled in the cove and he was disappointed that he saw no turtles.

After we returned, the kids from Tiki Tour came over. While we were out, several family boats had arrived and anchored. Some we’d already met and others we hadn’t. Eric dinghied around and said hi to all the new arrivals, catching up with the people we knew and introducing himself to the people we hadn’t. Christi and Keith stayed onboard with the Tiki kids. They went home for dinner, and after dinner, Fynn came back. Here was the sunset and dusk.

When Eric had returned from visiting the neighbors, the dinghy battery said it was at 70%. In the evening, Eric noticed the battery said it was only at 7%. Eric was shocked. He brought it  in and charged it via the plug. It did charge for a long time, indicating that it really had discharged and wasn’t an inaccurate message. He’s not sure if the motor was somehow left on and ran itself down or if there was some kind of drift error.

On Saturday morning, Eric went diving with Tony from Bogumila at 1000. They decided to go at high tide so it was more of a dive. They anchored the dinghy in 8-feet of water closer to shore, then got into the water, deployed their BCs and put their tanks on. It was a 60-foot long gradual slope down to the statue. Being high tide, the statue was at 13-feet deep. They did multiple circles around it, so they got a good look at it.

There was quite a bit of soft coral growth on the statue, especially between the grapes on the piano. There were at least two dozen fish swimming near the coral. Most of the fish were small, though there were a couple of larger ones. The tip of mermaid’s tail looked like it had been touched a lot so it didn’t have as much sediment on it as the rest of the statue. Based on what they saw of the tail tip, the statue looked to be made from stainless steel.

After they’d finished looking at the statue, they went about 15 feet farther out and saw more soft corals. They decided that, given how strong the current was, they shouldn’t go any farther than that. They were underwater for 30-minutes in total.   

In the afternoon, Keith went to shore with the kids from Tiki and Bogumila. Eric got out the platform and the kids wrestled on it.

Eric and Christi also went to shore. Christi walked as far as she could across the cove before it got too rocky and took a couple photos. Looking out at the anchorage.

Looking into the cove.

Another family came into the cove so the kids could snorkel, and Eric and Christi visited with the dad. Diane from Tiki and Anna from Bogumila eventually joined us, too. The adults were amazed at how long wrestling lasted. We thought the kids would tucker out and want to go home to eat, but we finally had to corral them and literally drag them back to the respective boats for dinner. 

Here were the sunset and dusk.