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.
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.
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.
Continue readingThe moon was not full anymore, but still shone vividly at dawn on Thursday, March 5
We’d arranged to meet two of the families at Thunderball Grotto at 0900, which was slack high tide. We were leery about getting in and out of the cave at high tide, but they assured us that it would not be a problem and said they thought it was better to go when there was no current.
We left Kosmos at 8:40, figuring it would take us 20-minutes to get there. But even though it was supposed to be nearly slack tide, the current was strong and our little 3 hp electric motor struggled. For a portion of the time, we were only going a little over one knot. It took 40-minutes to get there. Eric was frustrated. He’s been contemplating switching to a fast gas motor for the last few months, and he announced that this was the last straw – he was buying a new motor. When we got to the cave, we could barely see the entrance. We don’t think we would have been able to find it at all had we not been there before.
As our friends had assured us, getting in was not difficult. Here was a selfie with a view of the entrance from the inside.
Continue readingJust 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.
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