Even at 1/4 full, the moon was amazingly bright on Wednesday, March 11

Dawn

Yesterday morning, Tiki Tour arrived in the anchorage. After all the kids had finished school, the other four families took their dinghies to Rachel’s Bubble Bath. Keith tagged along with them. Eric and Christi stayed aboard Kosmos. They worked on getting things ready for Keith’s upcoming birthday party, including baking more cupcakes. Christi also worked on her land life project, and was thrilled about accomplishing something important (or so she thought). It felt like the anchorage was a bit rollier today than it had been yesterday.  

Later in the afternoon, the Tiki kids came over. They volunteered to taste test the cupcakes to make sure they were suitable for the party. The cupcakes were deemed acceptable. In the evening, we went over to Traveler for another round of cards (all of the adults played this time) and D & D (for the kids). 

Today, Driftwood, Tangent and Traveler took their dinghies over to a popular snorkeling site called The Aquarium, which was in the Land and Sea Park. Eric hitched a ride with them. We have not yet been to the Aquarium because we have a slow dinghy. While it was possible to anchor Kosmos at The Aquarium, that anchorage didn’t have good holding or good protection, so most cruisers anchored at better anchorages nearby and took their dinghies in. It also was another one of those anchorages where we would have to go through a narrow, shallow channel to get in and out.

Upon return, Eric said The Aquarium was the best snorkeling he has seen in the Bahamas, with lots of fish, including big fish, and colorful coral. Skye from Tangent was feeding them crackers and a cloud of fish surrounded her.

There was also a small plane that had crashed near The Aquarium that they snorkeled, too. Eric reported that it was a small Cessna with fixed wings that could hold 2 to 4 people. It was flipped upside down and the tail end was gone, so only the front was there. Eric thought it was cool; there was some coral and fish around it. He saw a puffer fish that was almost 3 feet long, which he said was the biggest he’d ever seen.

The one thing that he found concerning was that the group had anchored their dinghies near the sunken airplane, and a couple of the dinghies dragged because the bottom only had a thin layer of sand over rock.

Meanwhile, Christi and Keith stayed onboard Kosmos. The Tiki kids came over to hang out with Keith in the early afternoon. Christi was dismayed when she found out that she’d only partially accomplished her goal on her land life project and still had more work to do on that task.

At 1630, we sent the Tiki kids home and quickly got Kosmos ready to go to sea. Thankfully, there was no sea grass and no issues with bringing the anchor in. An hour and a half later, we dropped anchor in Big Major, this time close to March Dragon (who hadn’t gone to Pipe Cay with us). The Big Major anchorage was much calmer than Pipe Cay had been. This was a cool lighting effect as the sun was low in the sky and blocked by a cloud.

And the sunset.