After locating our mooring in the rain and gusts, we woke up Tuesday morning to a completely flat anchorage and clear skies. Really beautiful morning. After getting our bearings we made breakfast; eggs over easy, toast, coffee and juice.
After we cleaned up and again readjusted our storage/provisions, we went for a snorkel off the back of the boat. There is a reef on the west edge of the bay. Really spectacular. Before even jumping in we saw sting rays along the sandy bottom. I’m starting a list of missing gear on this trip. That underwater Go Pro I didn’t want to spend the money on – spend the money.
Here’s a short and incomplete list of what we saw: yellow sting rays, tarpons, balao, blue hamlets, reef squirrel fish, huge golilath groupers, yellow goat fishes and blue angel fish. (How can we identify all of these fish, you ask? From the waterproof pocket guide of corals and fishes we picked up in Tortola. Good purchase.) The reefs seem mostly healthy, although there is isolated bleaching. I imagine there was a time it was in better shape. Personally, we are trying to be as careful as possible to minimize our impact. Hopefully that is true of everyone.
While we do a have a good number of key things we want to see, do and eat during this trip, we are cautious of crowds and have found the need to get moving pretty early to enjoy popular spots and avoid the masses. We have done that and so far the areas have not been overly crowded. (Also, we move on w,hen the big tourist boats arrive and 100people begin jumping inProbably due to the time of year. The area is suppose to be crazy by the holidays.
Debbie and I are pretty good at macro planning, maybe less so with micro plans. We had not thought through the day beyond the morning. So we decided to get some sailing in. The winds had calmed down considerably so we decided to sail around Norman Island with no particular reason other then to get more comfortable withd the boat. We left the reefs in as a precaution not fully knowing the conditions on the south side of the island. We motored out to the channel, raised the sails and nothing. There was very little wind. We headed into the wind and removed the reefs and gave our low wind skills some work. I think we need a little more work as well as wind. So we motor sailed for a bit. We needed to run the engine some to bring the batteries back up anyway.
ArrivI got back at the Bight around 4:00 we picked up the same mooring, spiffied up and went to the beach bar for a few drinks, dingied back to fell asleep. After all it was 9:00.
Set A Course 
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