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.
It was still calm in the morning. We’d never put out the flopper stoppers, put on the window covers or got the dinghy down, so we had very little to do to get ready to go this morning. We pulled up anchor about 0630. It was a smooth passage to Blackpoint. We had a current with us and made amazing time, arriving at 1245.
Our friends on Algonquin and a Nordhavn 50 called Grey Goose were in the anchorage. Keith and Eric met them onshore. Christi stayed aboard to attend an online meeting.
They went to Lorraine’s on the road for lunch. Lorraine’s directed them to go to High Tide (the Lorraine’s on the waterfront) instead. After 30-minutes, the server still hadn’t taken their drink orders yet, so they left and went next door to the Yacht Club, instead. Eric had a nice time talking Nordhavns, but Keith was bored. After lunch, they headed back to Kosmos. Eric and Keith did stop by Lorraine’s mom’s for bread on both the way in and the way out, but she wasn’t home either time.
We’ll take a moment to share our opinions: we think the three restaurants in Blackpoint are all very comparable in terms of price, menu selection and quality of food. That said, we’ve decided that the Yacht Club was the overall best restaurant. We thought Lorraine’s had the best food, in part because she cooked the food to order, but the service was the slowest of the three, in part because she cooked food to order. Deshamon’s and Lorraine’s were inconsistent with hours. Emerald Sunset had stable hours and good service, but it was also the most expensive and the food was mediocre. The Yacht Club was reliable, with consistent hours, food, service and middle of the road prices. The biggest downside of the Yacht Club was that cats lived on the premises and sometimes the cat smell was quite strong — and for Christi, that was a big negative.
Christi hadn’t been on dry land since Wednesday and was anxious to go to shore. She and Eric headed to shore as soon as her meeting ended. Here were some of the birds watching them as they approached the dock.
It was another day of puttering around the boat. Before doing school, Eric and Keith changed the generator oil and cleaned the sea strainer for the generator. Eric also ran the wing engine. Then Keith and Christi did school. In the afternoon, Keith went tubing with Clean Cup while Eric and Christi went to shore. There were a couple of locals there who were making repairs to the hut, but they left shortly after the group arrived.
When they were done tubing, they joined everyone onshore. Here was another shot of Kosmos with both flopper stoppers out. You can see why we called them “the force field.” No one wanted to anchor too close to us when we had them out!
It was a chiily morning – only 66 degrees Farenheit! But it was 45-degrees in Florida and snowing in Baltimore, so it much warmer here in the Exumas than the rest of the US East Coast.
Eric celebrated the New Year by making a French toast breakfast with the coconut bread that we’d bought from Lorraine’s mom. This coconut bread was different than the one we’d gotten in Cat Island. In Cat Island, it was basically white bread with a hint of sweetness and a hint of coconut. Looking at it, you’d never realize it wasn’t plain white bread. Lorraine’s mom’s bread was basically white bread with a swirl of coconut jam in the middle — like a jellyroll cake but with bread instead of cake. The jam was made from tiny pieces of real coconut. Eric and Christi loved it and thought it made phenomenal French toast. Keith wasn’t a coconut fan and said he preferred French toast with regular bread.
After breakfast, Eric did a little gaming to help psych himself up for tackling the toilet. The first step was to clear out the closet. Then he had to disconnect the water pipes from the toilet. The water in the outgoing pipe spilled, which was stinky.
