A Day for Lazing

Today we left early, up at 6am, and anchors up by 6:30… and motored through strong winds and heavy swell, down to the bottom of this large bay of the Abacos that we’ve been in.  We’re getting ready to make passage tomorrow down to Eluthera Island of the far Bahamas.  Staging today for the passage tomorrow, only took about 3-4 hours.  So we anchored and got everything settled, but it was only 10 in the morning.

Our anchorage was lovely, we were sheltered behind a low island that was taking the brunt of the wind and waves from the Atlantic.  Our anchor was deeply set in the soft sand and grass and so we dove off the boat, heading toward the pristine white beaches in front of us.

Fiona has graduated from wearing a life jacket while snorkeling and hanging onto my hand at all times, to staying with me, but no jacket and routinely free-diving down to depths of 10-12 feet.  There’s something immensely gratifying at watching your beautiful daughters gracefully swimming in the crystal clear water.  I feel like a great mom, getting them out into nature, more physically active and immersed in their environment.

We spent hours frolicking in the light waves and white sand.  There were numerous puffy sand dollars, both alive and dead.  We figured out the dead shells often have tiny crabs in them.  We saw lots of sea cucumbers, a myriad of colorful fishes.  We found a small hard coral head, which was a miniature aquarium of a delightful fish and an immature small lobster – as well as long spiked purple sea urchins.  We saw clusters of pink tipped anenomes, and frolicked with schools of fish both tiny and large.  But most importantly – we were free to play in the water until we were ready to get out.  That was a first since we got here.

After everyone else opted to get out of the water, I spent another two or three hours going over our hull, looking at it very thoroughly and scrubbing off algae and crunchy things that were starting to make it their home.  I realized how much bottom paint has come off, and that we really might need to stop somewhere and get a bottom paint job done.  I also spent hours working in the crevices that have been neglected, removing barnacles that had managed to get to a more mature state.  It was very satisfying and I didn’t mind the work at all.

Tomorrow, we’ll head out onto our next place of adventure… we’re looking forward to the trip.