Snorkeling in Warderick Wells Cay and Moving to Sampson Cay, The Exuma Islands, The Bahamas — And Thoughts on Refrigerator/Freezers

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.

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Peggy’s Trail, Tubing and Games in Warderick Wells Cay, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

On Thursday, March 19, we pulled up anchor first thing in the morning. As had been forecast, it was raining with no wind. The lack of wind meant there was a lot of slack in the chain, so it was easy to get the snubber off and the anchor up, and we didn’t have to be out in the rain for long. Because there was no wind, we’d been doing circles around the anchor.

We left near high tide, on the rising tide. We were following the previous track that we’d taken in, so there wasn’t the anxiety going through the pass today that there had been on Monday when we weren’t 100% sure of the depths. Thanks to the lack of wind, it was a comfortable 2.5 hour ride to Warderick Wells Cay, though it did rain lightly the whole time.

The catamarans we were meeting had anchored in the same area that we’d anchored in at Christmas. The water in that anchorage was, for the most part, too shallow for us. Eric managed to thread through the narrow, slightly deeper channel to score the lone deep spot amongst them. We had to go out in the rain to anchor.

By the time Keith and Christi had finished schoolwork, the rain had stopped. Zimovia took all 9 kids (between the four boats) tubing. They ran two tubes at a time to maximize the number of kids being pulled per run.

Afterwards, the kids hung out of the beach for a little while.

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Dealing with Dinghy Motor Problems During Stormy Weather in Over Yonder Cay, The Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

On Tuesday, March 17, Christi woke up before dawn. She sat outside on the bow and stargazed for a few minutes. With no light pollution, the stars were luminous. Sitting there made her realize the sounds of the water in this spot were almost musical. The current hitting the boat sounded like gentle running water, and there was also the crashing of waves behind the barrier island. She wasn’t out there long before large, ominous clouds rolled in and blocked the view. We did have a little bit of color at dawn, but the dark clouds kept rolling in and blocked the sunrise.

As was forecast, it rained in hard in the morning, then slowed down to on-and-off rain for the rest of the day. Usually it was moderate showers, but a few hard showers did pass over us. We were happy about that since the boat really needed the wash down. The wind changed direction several times throughout the day, and we were glad we’d chosen an anchorage with the 360 protection as it was comfortable onboard despite the tumultuous winds.

Eric noticed an error message on dinghy motor’s display panel saying to recalibrate. He pushed the appropriate buttons and nothing happened. He unplugged battery and plugged it back in. Then when he pushed the buttons to recalibrate, it worked. He tested the motor. It worked. All seemed to be fine.

In the late afternoon, the boys from Clean Cup and Zimovia came over to play games. After they left, Eric looked at the dinghy motor panel again and saw it had the same error message. He figured he’d deal with it tomorrow. 

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Moving Back to Over Yonder Cay, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

Dawn on Monday, March 16

The forecast had predicted that it would rain last night, and when we woke up, we were disappointed to find that it hadn’t. The boat was starting to get gross and needed a good wash down.

Christi was the first one up, and she started working on getting the boat ready to go to sea as soon as she got up. If the forecast was correct, the wind direction was going to shift soon and the anchorage would become rolly and uncomfortable. Last night, we hadn’t totally decided where we were going to go, but we’d been leaning towards going back to Over Yonder Cay.

When Eric got up, he checked the route and saw we’d have to go through yet another narrow, shallow channel to get there. While the tide was high right then, it was a falling tide, and Eric announced that we need to leave right NOW before it got too shallow. We got the dinghy up, brought the paravane in, and lifted the anchor.

Our friends on Tiki Tour had texted last night and said they were going to Pipe Cay today. We’d texted back this morning that we were going to Over Yonder Cay. Tiki left the same time we did and were right behind us, so we guessed they were probably going to join us at Over Yonder.

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Lying Low in Big Major/Staniel, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

Dawn on Saturday, March 14

This morning, Eric made French toast for breakfast. Since our attempts at buying groceries yesterday failed, we tried again today. We brought Fynn from Tiki Tour with us.

Before going to the store, we went to the Yacht Club for lunch. The kids played pool while we waited for our food.

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