Dawn on Friday, March 27, taken as we were getting ready to go to sea.
And the sunrise.
We pulled up anchor at 0745. It was a mostly sunny day with scattered clouds. The conditions were uncomfortable until noon, with 14-knots of wind and fairly large waves on the beam. Keith got sea sick. Christi didn’t feel great. But then the wind calmed down a little down to 10 – 11 knots and the seas began to smooth out. By 1400, it was a nice ride. We ran at 1600 RPM and our speeds averaged in the low 6s.
This morning, the anchorage was rolly and uncomfortable. We did our morning routine of school and chores, but Christi and Keith had to stop school work early because they were both getting nauseated from trying to read with all the motion (as an FYI, we generally did not do school work when Kosmos was in transit because of the propensity to get seasick).
We decided that we needed to escape the rocking and spend the day onshore. Other than the public park, there was nothing open to the public that was within walking distance. Since we were low on “passage foods,” we wanted to go to the grocery store. We also wanted to eat out for lunch. Eric looked up prices and found that it would cost $35 – $40 each way to take a taxi to the closest grocery store. We knew it would cost the same or less to rent a car for the day. The first two rental agencies that we called had no cars available, but the third place did. They said it would cost $60 for the car for the day, plus a $30 fee to pick us up and drop us back off. We agreed to the terms. We arranged to be picked up at noon at the public beach.
At the beach, there were pylons that looked like they were the remains of what was once a dock. A couple of dinghies were tied to the pylons, but we decided that, with the tide swing while we were gone, it would be safer to beach the dinghy. This was looking northwest from the beach.
continued... We quickly got the dinghy down, got the snorkeling gear out of the lazarette, suited up and hopped into the dinghy. Here was a shot of the rock called The Aquarium.
There were moorings on the southwest side of the rock, which was the main snorkeling area. We attached to the mooring, which already had several other dinghies on it, and hopped in.
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.
Friday, March 20, continued... In the afternoon, the kids from Tiki and Zimovia came over to play a game called Munchkin. After a while, they moved to Zimovia, which had a bigger table and better seating than Kosmos.
After they left, Eric, Christi and Clean Cup went snorkeling with another family in the anchorage called Sail La Vie. Christi and Eric had briefly met Sail La Vie one of the times we were in Big Major and they seemed like a nice family. We invited Clean Cup to join us since the Clean Cup kids were close in age to the Sail La Vie kids.
The motor had dried out and seemed to be working fine now, so Eric and Christi took their own dinghy — but warned the other two families that a motor failure was possible and to be prepared to rescue them. They left very early just in case there was an emergency. The motor seemed to work fine, which was a relief. Since they were so early, they waited on the sandbar in the middle of The Horseshoe for the other two families to arrive.
