The anchorage at dawn on Sunday, March 22

When we got up, we were pleased to see that the forecast had been correct — the wind had shifted so that anchoring at Rachel’s Bubble Bath would be comfortable today. As soon as we got up, we immediately started getting Kosmos ready to go to sea. We pulled up anchor at 0715, as the sun was rising. It took us about an hour and 20-minutes to get to the anchorage on Compass Cay that was next to Rachel’s Bubble Bath. We had to go through the narrow, shallow channel while the current was strong, which was stressful, but we followed our previous line and all went smoothly. We immediately got dinghy down and made breakfast. 

After breakfast, we met the crew from Tiki Tour on shore and trekked up the short saltwater river to the Bubble Bath.

Thanks to the recent big winds, the waves were huge. They were even coming over the left side of the big rock — in our previous visits, we’d only seen the waves come over the right side of the rock.

The waves were coming from the correct angle to make the big, frothy waves inside the bath. Everyone had a lot of fun getting doused by the waves.

At one point, Eric got knocked over so hard by a wave that he bit through the mouth piece on his snorkel!

Keith and Keira were the last to get out. While Fynn was waiting, he collected little crabs.

Keith and the Tiki kids.

The Tiki Tour and Kosmos crews.

When we arrived back at the beach, our dinghy motor was dead. Eric managed to get the motor working. We went back to Kosmos, showered, had lunch and brought the dinghy up. Then Tiki Tour picked Keith up in their dinghy. As soon as Keith was gone, Eric and Christi lifted anchor and set off for Big Major. Tiki Tour was right behind us. They started by motor-sailing, then tuned the engine off and were under pure wind power. Keith said he initially panicked when the engine went off, before realizing that was what was supposed to happen. We don’t think Keith has ever been under pure sail power before, and he said it was weird.

Here was a shot to help show how narrow the channel was. We were as far over as we could (safely) be, and it felt uncomfortably close when we passed other boats.

While Keith was aboard Tiki, he missed a major milestone aboard Kosmos: we rolled up 50,000 nautical miles! We want to emphasize that Eric has been aboard for just about every mile. Christi has done the vast majority of the miles with him — we’re estimating she’s done at least 48,000 of those miles.

We dropped anchor next to March Dragon. Tiki dropped anchor on the other side of us. Keith went tubing with Tiki and the kids from another boat in the anchorage that Tiki was friends with. 

We had plans to go over to March Dragon to play cards in the evening. At 1645, Eric went to pick Keith up so he could shower and eat dinner before we headed over. The dinghy motor was dead. This time, he couldn’t get it working. Eric swapped it out with our old 1.5 hp Torqueedo electric motor, which we’d kept onboard as a spare when we’d upgraded to our lighting fast 3-hp Torqueedo. Tiki dropped Keith off while Eric was working on configuring the old motor. He tested it and was relieved that it was still working fine. We were ½ hour late to March Dragon, but we made it!

At about sunset, something bizarre happened. We heard what sounded like a horn honking, then a cannon fired, then there was more honking. The horn sounded like it came from a different direction than the cannon fire. We had no idea what it was and were totally baffled by it. No one freaked out or sent an emergency alert, so we assumed that all was fine and continued on with our card game. We had a nice time with them. Here were the March Dragon and Kosmos crews.

And the twilight.