Category Archives: Failure

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Snorkeling and Diving The Piano at Rudder Cay, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

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Just 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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Moving to an Unnamed Sand Bar in the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, The Bahamas

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Dawn on Saturday, December 27

We forgot to mention that one of the chores that Eric had done a few days ago was change the generator oil. Today he put away the tools. Eric frequently says that in boat maintenance, getting everything out and putting it all away again often took longer than the task itself. Eric also spent some time in the morning trying to figure out why the air conditioner in the salon mysteriously stopped working. He cleaned the sea strainer and checked the oils, but didn’t see a problem.

Today the wind was dead and the seas were completely calm. Here was our flopper stopper.

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Christmas with the Ranger at Warderick Wells Cay, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

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On Thursday, December 25, 2025, Christi woke up at 0500, before first light. Warderick Wells basically has zero lights and it was cloudless (which was rare), making the stars especially vibrant. She sat outside for a few minutes and saw a shooting star! This was the dawn.

Early in the morning, the park ranger’s wife sang to us about the rules of the park. We’d forgotten about her morning announcements!

Some of the other parents organized a scavenger hunt around the island for the kids. in the morning, Keith went on the scavenger hunt. Here was a shot of the group.

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Lying Low Between the Majors, Staniel Cay Area, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

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On 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.

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Moving to Between the Majors, Staniel Cay Area, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

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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.

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