Lying Low in Hog Cay, Ragged Islands, The Bahamas

Dawn on Wednesday, February 18

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!

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Hiking to a Viewpoint in Hog Cay, Ragged Islands, The Bahamas

Sunrise on Tuesday, February 17

Our friends on Tiki Tour were at an anchorage a couple miles away from us. This morning, they sent a text saying that they were coming over to visit in their dinghy. Since we’d last seen them, they’d picked up another set of guests, who were a family that used to cruise on a boat called Betsy. Betsy came, too. Sadly, their timing was terrible because all of the other families in the anchorage had taken their dinghies to town today to meet the supply ship. The other families would have been thrilled to see Tiki and Betsy again.

Tiki arrived armed with paint because they’d heard through the grapevine that their sign had faded. The first thing they did was refresh their sign.

Then they loaned us their paint and Eric painted a Kosmos sign.

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Hanging Out at Hog Cay, Ragged Islands, The Bahamas

Sunday, February 15 — We puttered around the boat in the morning and early afternoon. Eric and Keith put out both flopper stoppers. There was only mild motion, so one would have been enough for today, but the forecast said that on Monday, the wind would change directions to be from the south. We knew that on Monday, we’d need the second flopper stopper, so Eric was proactive.

We had an early dinner and headed over to the beach at about 1630. One couple was already there and the rest of the boats arrived shortly after. Keith played with the kids while Eric and Christi chatted with the adults. It was a really nice visit. We had been planning to clean the bottom here, but were warned that there were aggressive bull sharks in this anchorage. The bottom can certainly wait! Here was the sunset.

And a shot of the beach looking the other direction

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Transit to Hog Cay, The Ragged Islands, The Bahamas

Dawn on Friday, February 13

We again got up early, got Kosmos ready to go, and lifted anchor at about 0610. This was another one of those passages where we couldn’t make a direct line because the majority of the area was too shallow, and the only access was through the narrow Comer Channel (the yellow line on the map below was the route we took from Georgetown to Flamingo Cay. The channel was cut through the light area around the southwest side of Great Exuma Island).

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Transit to Georgetown to Renew Visas

Thursday, February 12 — This morning, we were up early, quickly got Kosmos ready to go, and lifted anchor at about 0600. Here was the dawn shortly before sunrise.

We were sad to be leaving this anchorage so quickly — it was a calm and looked like it would be a lovely place to spend a few days. Also, The No Foreign Land app said a couple of the other boats in the anchorage were family boats, so it would have been nice to meet them. But we had important matters to attend to. Here was the sun rising as we were underway.

It was a smooth ride most of the way to Georgetown. Here was a shot of the scenery along the way.

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