Big Major's Spot, Bahamas
24.11.264N
76.27.548W
Today's excitement was the Great Escape. As Dale had promised Roger, he appeared on their stern at 8:00 am with tools in hand and a promise to me that he'd return by 10 am to take me over to Thunderball Cave. He just barely kept that promise. It seems that Roger, who freely admits to not being mechanically inclined, had tried to trouble shoot the problem with his generator and in so doing, had accidentally created another. They were able to jury rig one problem, but the new problem needed another part. So in frustration, Roger and Elaine pulled into the Staniel Cay Yacht Club to ponder their dilemma. At least they will be able to plug into power there.
Although it was blustery all day, we had waited for low tide to explore Thunderball Cave and felt that the wind really wouldn't have that much effect on us. The cave itself was pretty cool but smaller than what I was anticipating. After Rocky Dundas, I guess I was expecting something bigger and grander. It was a cave that had two openings so that the water flowed through it, instead of in and out of it. The entry was lower in the water, so that you had to snorkel into it before you could look up. It still had a high interior with a hole in the ceiling for filtered light; not many stalactites and the fish were limited to some pretty aggressive sergeant majors. I had brought some bread crumbs with us and they devoured it like piranhas.
When we returned to the Palace, we rinsed out our wet suits and hung them over the back arch to dry. After lunch, I noticed that one was missing. Dale said that he hadn't moved his so it had made an escape when we weren't looking. Our first inclination was to check the water under the boat. Dale grabbed his snorkel and mask and started a grid search around us. Then we thought, what if it floated? Behind us about a mile were some small islands/big rocks. We planned to zigzag back and forth slowly in the dink to the islands to check the surface, then Dale would hop overboard and I'd drag him slowly back searching the bottom. We had made it all the way out to the islands, when Dale saw it making a dash for the Banks. It had managed to slip between a couple of the islands and was heading west. We zipped over to it, snatched it up by the scruff of the neck, wrestled it into the boat and made our way back to the Palace. Dale washed it out, again, and this time put it on the cooler on the back deck. By golly, we had no sooner turned our backs and it was off the cooler and trying to make its way back into the water. This was one determined wet suit. This time, we just threw it into the cockpit and vowed to find the industrial strength clothes pins you use on tarps, to secure it to a line. Mine was still draped over the arch like a racer in the starting blocks. I grabbed her down, threw her into the cockpit with a warning: "don't even think about it".
Tomorrow we think we'll move on to Little Farmers Cay, hopefully with both wet suits still with us.
