Sunrise on Tuesday, March 24

First thing this morning, we went to the airport to say goodbye to Tiki Tour’s guest, Angela (who was going home) and their crew member, Keira (who was going on a short trip). They unloaded the luggage at the dock, but we weren’t allowed to leave our dinghies on the dock, so we beached them and walked over to the airport.

Group shot before they boarded the plane.

Our plan was to go to Norman  Cay today. While we were at the airport, Eric was lamenting about how sad it was that Christi and Keith hadn’t been to The Aquarium — then he realized today was the perfect day to go. The wind was light, so we could actually anchor there. When we checked the boating apps, there were zero boats listed as currently anchored there, so Eric was feeling relatively confident we’d be able to get a spot in the limited area with enough sand for decent holding.

If we were going to make a stop to snorkel and still make it to Norman before sunset, we had to move fast. Upon return to Kosmos, we immediately pulled up anchor. This map doesn’t show exactly how far the trip was, but Staniel Cay was just south of the island that was cut off at the bottom of this map.

Taking the boat to The Aquarium was apparently was not an original idea because, once Bell Island came into view, we could see a conga line of boats traveling single-file in the channel towards The Aquarium.

To give you a sense of just how narrow the channel was, here was a photo of a small powerboat that was leaving The Aquarium passing a couple of catamarans on their way in.

And this was how close he got to us.

Here was a video of us going through one of the narrower, shallower spots in the channel.

And here were a couple of photos of the interesting structures that were on Bell Island. This looked like a giant garage for water toys. The building to the left looked like a residence.

And one of the houses.

When we arrived, there were a bunch of boats in the anchorage, but most of them were right next to The Aquarium, where the holding was poor. Much to our surprise, there was room for Kosmos in the area with better holding — a patch of sand next to the island just north of O’Brien’s Cay. We dropped anchor there. We could smell trash burning. Here were a few shots of the anchorage. These were some structures on the island that we were anchored near.

The roof was another structure on the island we were next to.

The rock in the middle of this photo was The Aquarium, which was at the tip of O’Brien Island. The boats are anchored just to its right.

The island to the right was Little Halls Pond Cay, which was supposedly owned by Johnny Depp. He didn’t come out to say hi.

Another shot of Johnny’s island.

We quickly got the dinghy down, got the snorkeling gear out of the lazarette, suited up and… to be continued…