Day 157, Year 10: Thunderball Grotto
Date: Monday, March 16, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Light NE Winds
Location: Anchored at Big Majors (near Staniel Cay), Exumas
The big outing today was going to Thunderball Grotto. This is a cave that you can swim into at low tide or dive under the opening at high tide. Once inside, it is a cavernous space with openings in the top that allow shafts of sunlight into the cave. It was a neat experience but there were loads of other people enjoying it making it a bit crowded and crazy. There were boatloads of tourists were there. At one point, Mark was swimming across from one side to the other inside the cave when there was an explosion in the water right beside him. A young man had decided to jump into the water from one of the holes overhead and Mark was very lucky that he wasn’t wiped out. The young man hit the water about four feet from Mark and as Mark said, “I really wasn’t looking for a near death experience today.” Hopefully we will get to go back and enjoy Thunderball when there aren’t so many tourists visiting.
We have two boat issues that have put a bit of a damper on our spirits. One is that the water pump for fresh water in the boat burned out yesterday and the other is that the zipper for the front ‘window’ of our dodger is broken. More about this in a minute, but first I’ll write about the water pump. Without the pump, the only way we can access the water in our tanks is through the foot pump at our kitchen sink. This means no filtered drinking water and no showers. We are using the big bathtub that surrounds Windbird and then rinsing off the salt water with the solar shower on deck. So that is not a hassle. But you have to wash your hands, brush your teeth, wash your face, etc., in the kitchen sink. This is inconvenient, but not a show stopper. And luckily Mark is headed to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow and is hopeful that he will find a way to get to West Marine to buy a new pump. He also needs to pick up zincs. When Lee and Lynda dove on the bottom of Sea Turtle the other day, they discovered that their zinc has totally dissolved. We had an extra, so Lee dove down this morning to put it on the prop shaft. But unfortunately, he dropped half of it and could not find it on the bottom. So Mark took our other spare over to him and he was successful in getting that put on. But now we need to buy more spares. So Mark will also do that when he goes to West Marine. His trip to Fort Lauderdale is a quick one. If all goes as planned, he flies out at 3:30 pm tomorrow and returns at 3:00 pm the next day. On Wednesday morning he gets a treatment at 8 am and immediately afterwards he hopes that Sue and Brad will be able to take him to West Marine before delivering him to the Executive Airport at 12 noon. Doing the trip in a 24 hour period is costly, but we are just thankful that it is possible. The second problem, the broken zipper in the front window of the dodger, is more of a problem. Right now we can zip and unzip one side but not the other of the U-shaped zipper. Without being able to completely unzip the enter piece of plastic, we get no air circulation in the cockpit. We thought about trying different things to fix the zipper, but if we do something and cannot close the ‘window’ completely, we could get very wet in rough seas and when it rains. If we couldn’t close the ‘window’, rain would pour straight down into the main cabin unless we also keep that closed. And it is a bit too hot for that, so we have decided to leave well enough alone. At least right now we can almost zip up completely and we can unzip the one side for a little air. This is a problem that will have to be fixed professionally and we will have to wait until we get back to Little River to have the work done. The cockpit enclosure is only five years old and shouldn’t be giving us this kind of problem. I know we’ll learn to cope, but the two issues happening on the same day didn’t make for happy times. But tomorrow is another day and Kevin and Claire arrive and on Thursday we leave here headed north to the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. And just as the name indicates, we hope to have lots of fun exploring on land and in the sea.
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| 150316 Best of Day 157 Bahamas–Thunderball Grotto |
