{"id":23778,"date":"2026-07-09T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/?p=23778"},"modified":"2026-07-09T12:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:44:17","slug":"snorkeling-in-warderick-wells-cay-and-moving-to-sampson-cay-the-exuma-islands-the-bahamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/2026\/07\/09\/snorkeling-in-warderick-wells-cay-and-moving-to-sampson-cay-the-exuma-islands-the-bahamas\/","title":{"rendered":"Snorkeling in Warderick Wells Cay and Moving to Sampson Cay, The Exuma Islands, The Bahamas — And Thoughts on Refrigerator\/Freezers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Friday, March 20, continued.<\/a>.. In the afternoon, the kids from Tiki and Zimovia<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After they left, Eric, Christi and Clean Cup<\/a> 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The motor had dried out and seemed to be working fine now<\/a>, 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<\/a> for the other two families to arrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christi and Eric were sad to report that snorkeling was a bust. The visibility was not good; we’re guessing because it was shallow water and the heavy winds\/bigger waves had stirred up a lot of sand. One of the Clean Cup boys saw a big grouper and Eric saw a couple of big fish, but that was it. The group was very disappointed about not seeing any spotted eagle rays<\/a> or sunfish or turtles<\/a>. The current was strong and we had a hard time swimming against it. Here was a shot of the Ranger’s Station<\/a> as we were on our way back to the anchorage in the dinghy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And a shot of the anchorage as we were approaching it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After snorkeling, Christi and Eric stopped by Clean Cup for a short visit, then went back to Kosmos for dinner. They were hungry and didn’t wait for Keith to return. When Keith did finally come back, he was starving and ate a huge quantity of food. We were all tired and had a quiet night onboard. This was the dusk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On Saturday, Eric checked the dinghy motor first thing. All looked good. At around 0930, Tiki texted that they and Zimovia were going to Cambria (Little Bell Cay)<\/a> right then. We said we’d go, too. We got the dinghy up and leisurely started getting ready to go. Steve from Clean Cup stopped by to see Kosmos and we chatted with him for a while.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Steve left, we realized that we had to leave RIGHT THEN because it was yet another anchorage where we\u2019d have to go through a narrow, shallow channel <\/a>that could only be navigated at high tide, which was about 1030ish. We very quickly finished getting ready to go and pulled up anchor at about 1040ish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long after we’d left, Tiki texted that they were going to go to Rachel\u2019s Bubble Bath<\/a>, instead. We knew that anchorage would be terrible in these conditions<\/a> so we said we wouldn’t join them. Eric really was not excited about navigating that channel into Cambria and consulted the charts. He decided that Sampson’s Cay was the best option. It looked well protected for these conditions and appeared easy to get to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric changed course and all was going smoothly until 1230, when the active-fin stabilizers suddenly stopped working. When Eric trouble-shooted them, he saw that they thought Kosmos was running in reverse gear. Eric cleaned the sensor in the engine room next to the transmission. The stabilizers worked again. Woo hoo! It was very rolly during the short time that we were without the stabilizers. We were glad we’d been in the lagoon and not the open ocean when this happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We arrived at anchorage a little after 1300. Here is a map showing where we anchored and another showing how far we’d gone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was picturesque; a pretty shoreline on two sides and little islands dotting the scenery on the other two sides. There were quite a few large boats in the anchorage, including three Nordhavn-76s. Here were some shots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The anchorage was calm when there was no traffic, but fast boats frequently zoomed by, causing wakes. We never got the dinghy down; we just laid low onboard for the rest of the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After our last grocery run in Nassau<\/a>, the freezers were completely full. Since then, we’ve been steadily depleting our supply of frozen food. With the food that Christi made today, we were able to officially turn off the big dedicated freezer and move the remaining frozen items into the bottom drawer of one of our combo units. Eric was glad that one of our biggest power hogs was being turned off, making managing the power much less stressful for him. The defrosting process was not too bad — not that much ice had built up since it was last defrosted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is probably a good time to talk about our refrigerators and freezers. Our original dedicated freezer (when the boat was new) was a top loading house unit that worked phenomenally well. But being a top loader, we couldn’t utilize the prime flat space, and Christi couldn’t reach the items at the bottom of the unit. Shortly after our circumnavigation<\/a>, we opted for a Vitifrigo drawer freezer made specifically for boats. It could run off either 12-volt DC or 120-volt AC. We bought it from Defender and installed it ourselves. It never worked very well. Someday we’ll write a post about the difficulty in changing the dimensions of the space so it could be securely installed and all that we did to get it work okay, such as installing an extra fan. But even with everything we did, it barely keeping things frozen. Food went bad quickly because it wasn’t really cold enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After we returned from Baja<\/a>, we decided it was time to replace it. It was still operating fine, but we knew it was at the end of its life. We replaced it with another Vitifrigo dedicated freezer that we bought and had installed through a dealer. The dealer told us that we’d probably gotten a lemon and that had we bought through a dealer, the dealer would have replaced it for us. This one works much better than the last one, but it’s still not anywhere as cold as the original top-loading freezer. The downside of both of the Vitifrigo freezers was that they needed to be frequently defrosted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also originally had a dedicated refrigerator and a fridge\/freezer combo unit, both also made for regular home use. Those units worked great, but house refrigerators have issues on boats<\/a>, so in 2018, we changed them to Vitifrigo drawer units made specifically for boats. We also bought those from Defender and installed them ourselves. Those worked fine and we had no complaints until they both died in 20<\/a>23. Those also iced up and needed to be periodically defrosted, but not nearly as often as the freezer(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We replaced both units with new frost-free fridge\/freezer configurable units, installed by a dealer. Configurable units means that each unit can be run as a two-drawer refrigerator, a two drawer freezer, or have one drawer of each — though only the bottom drawer could be used as a freezer when in dual mode. We loved the idea of the flexibility to switch the units to what was needed at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, when we ordered them, we didn’t realize how small the insides of the drawers would be. The capacity of these units was much smaller than the previous units that we’d had. With our old units, we could fit all of our normal refrigerator items in the dedicated fridge and rarely had to turn on the dual unit. Now, with the smaller capacity, we usually need more refrigerator space than one unit has, and therefore, we almost always run both dual units. Had we known about the limited capacity, we would have stuck with one dedicated refrigerator and only ordered one configurable unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dual units do work well and we like that we don’t have to defrost them. But if something spills in a drawer, the unit does throw a warning that it is having trouble keeping up with added moisture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post has gotten long enough, so we’ll save the story of the installation nightmare with the configurable units for another post. But the very quick TLDR is that we did need the dealer install — twice! Spending the extra money on the dealer install paid off in spades. When the factory fresh units did not work properly, the dealer went to bat for us to get new units. And we were spared the physical difficulty of the labor involved in replacing the two defective units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyways, here was the sunset and dusk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[402,3,52,9,65,1,63,64,20,394],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bahamas-caribbean","category-boat-technical","category-caribbean","category-cruising-life","category-failure","category-general","category-maintenance","category-repair","category-scuba-snorkeling","category-upgrade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23778"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23824,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23778\/revisions\/23824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}