On Saturday, December 13, the sunrise was again blocked, but some of the clouds turned pretty colors.
After morning chores, we went to shore to get lunch. The public dinghy dock. There were three ladders. It looked like it had been really well built, but it was starting to show wear. One of the ladders wasn’t secured properly, another was missing a part of the hand rail, making it a little challenging to get onto the dock. The third ladder was in good shape, though!
Dawn on Friday, December 12
And the sunrise.
This morning, the wind shifted back to the prevailing winds from the east. This meant we could finally go back to Thunderball Grotto. Coincidentally, this week Keith studied limestone rock and its erosion patterns in science. Thunderball Grotto was the perfect place to see the effects of erosion!
Continue readingOn Wednesday, December 10, 2025, we woke up wondering if the Apocalypse had just happened.
While Christi and Keith did school, Eric removed the salinity probe and cleaned it. But it didn’t help — the sensor still wasn’t working. When he put it back, he tightened it as much as he could to ensure it didn’t leak.
We needed to go to the grocery store. We decided to go to shore at 1130, figuring that would give us enough time to have lunch and do our grocery shopping before the current was too strong in either direction. We somehow made a big mistake in calculations. Going in, the current was still strong. We made slow forward progress while the battery power was quickly sucked down. Eric had intended to bring a spare battery for the dinghy to be safe, but when we were about halfway to shore, he realized he’d forgotten it. From there on out, he was really anxious about getting stranded. We made it to the yacht club dinghy area with no problems. It was high tide, and the sea wall was again underwater.
On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, it was raining during sunrise. The view of the sun was completely obscured, but there were some pretty colors prior to the rain rolling in.
Much to our dismay, when we checked the forecast this morning, we saw that it had changed again — the wind would continue to come from the west all day today. Argh. We were frustrated with ourselves for not moving yesterday. When Eric and Keith went to bring in the flopper stopper, they saw this guy was making circles around it.
We immediately moved to the anchorage called Between the Majors on the northwest side of Big Major Cay. It was much more comfortable than the south side had been, but still rolly enough to deploy the port side flopper stopper. One of the issues with this anchorage that had made Eric reluctant to move yesterday was that it had a strong current that caused the boats to swing wildly from one direction to the other, increasing the chance of dragging. And the boats didn’t move together in unison. Some boats moved more with the wind direction and others with the current, so there was a bigger chance of collisions in this type of anchorage. We made sure that we anchored far away from the other boats and that the anchor was set well. This was our view of the anchorage looking northeast towards Fowl Cay.
Continue readingShortly before dawn on Monday, December 8, 2025
The wind had changed direction and was now coming from the west, making the anchorage very rolly today. It felt like we were at sea. It was also unbelievably humid. Between the humidity and the rocking, it was uncomfortable onboard. We considered moving to the other side of Big Major Cay for more protection, but that anchorage had some issues, too. The forecast said the wind would shift tomorrow, so we figured it was easier to just deal with the motion for one day than it would be to move over to the north side and then back again tomorrow.
After school and morning chores, Eric and Keith went to shore to take out the trash and get lunch. Christi had an online meeting tied to her land life project, so she stayed aboard. She was sad to miss out on dry land time. Instead of taking the most direct route, where they’d be pummeled by waves coming from the south, Eric took the dingy through the pass between Big Major Cay and Fowl Cay around to the northwest side of the island, where they were protected from the waves (see map). When they arrived to the yacht club’s dinghy area, it was high tide. They were surprised to see that it was flooded.
