Good morning

I was up early again which is great as I see the sunrise :-) . I would like a sleep in someday but that doesn't appear to be in the cards for me on the boat likely due to the fact we go to bed so early hehe. As I sit here and reflect on boating and the boating life I have to say the good out ways the bad, there are times when I'm not thrilled to be honest unorganized waves are not my favorite but then there is this moment, quiet calm the sound of the waves gently hitting the shore the waves rippling agains the boat gargle girgle it truly is a moment to hold onto!
 
Looks like it will be a gorgeous day here, there are some blustery clouds over the island but other than that clear sky's.

We will explore in the dingy today, snorkel, walk the island and laze about. Tomorrow we are off to Long Island. We might try and find the one and only bar / resort it's close to us but who knows where.

Wow what a day we had it was great, are you tired of me saying that yet...sorry! We started out with a dingy ride to explore the options for the day . Made our way past the Umbrella Rock that's the name the chart books gave it, interesting weather beaten rock. On the rock we saw two types of birds one that looked a lot like a bald eagle only it wasn't it was much bigger there were two sitting there and one flew off as we passed perhaps Albatross? Also on the rock were many gulls they are not like our gulls black wings white heads and lots and lots of babies.

From there we made our way out to the barrier reef that protects the bay the skipper figured we would have a good snorkel experience there. We dropped the anchor off the dingy which is our first time doing that, worked like a charm and in we went. Oh my the skipper knows his coral reefs it was amazing so we swam and swam saw a lot of great tropical fish and coral.Bryan said it was better than the dive he paid for in Turks. From there it was time to teach the 1st mate how to use the dingy, another lesson learned for me how to start and stop the engine and how to steer the thing that was fun . We made our way over to the one other Sail boat in the harbor said hello turns out they are from Toronto and have been sailing with there 3 kids since Christmas lucky kids!  

Then over to the other side of the bay navigating around the coral heads oh my you wouldn't want to come into this bay at night you would crash for sure. There looked like a road there so we pulled the dingy up onto shore and secured the anchor into the sand, put our water shoes on and went for a walk. Gnarly ground cover and weathered looking trees the rocks are sharp with lots of holes the weather has beaten them badly over the years. It looks like there must have been the start of a bar / resort there (see the picture) now it is abandoned and sort of eery looking... we kept waiting for something to jump out at us hehe. Needless to say we didn't stay long and made our way back to the beach where the dingy was. If you are ever on this island remember to always where shoes we managed to get our water shoes covered with barbs and some of them into our skin but they didn't hurt just had to pull them out very strange little things . We went for another snorkel there it was pretty good as well.   

Back to the boat for a quick lunch then it was scuba diving time. I have not dove since the last time we were in BVI which was 4 years ago so I needed a lot of refreshing. We started the dive and lessons off the boat but it was clear to the instructor / skipper that I needed to back up a few steps so we took all our gear into shore for some lessons. After a few minutes I felt so much better did the drills regular in and out under water, fill the mask clear the mask etc. then the skipper felt I was good to go so we went down about 7 feet and swam around the sandy shore line until I was feeling good with it all. Then off we went for a dive off the beach by the coral we snorkeled at earlier, it was amazing you are right down there with the fish and coral at their level incredible feeling, I felt really comfortable it all came back to me thank goodness.  During that dive we saw a Manta Ray it was just hanging out at the bottom about 4 feet long we just stopped and watched him until he / she got tired of us staring and swam away, they are really cool looking a lot fatter than I would have thought very cool . Early in the day we saw them at the shore and I saw one flying so cool.

After that back to the boat to desalt everything including ourselves. A very long day in the water we started at 10AM and finished at 4 yikes I'm pooped.  

Dinner on board tonight consisted of a lovely black bean, mushroom, tomato soup very tasty.

So to recap today we saw, tropical fish of all kinds, barracuda (on the first snorkel), manta ray, large birds possibly albatross, gulls, coral of all kinds a very successful day.  

Last note we are not alone there were 3 more sail boats show up and a power cat way to many people now time to bug out. We are leaving in the morning for Long Island we will be there for 2 nights.

Night all.