Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Today is the big day. At least in my mind. Todd was willing to skip this day, but I think he came to appreciate us pressing on yesterday after the fun sailing in the afternoon. If we had voted to skip the pigs and end early yesterday, we would have missed all of that heeling over fun.
We set our alarms for 6 am so that we could eat an oatmeal breakfast, quickly get the dinghy ready and motor over to pig beach, also known as Big Majors Cay. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, Dave had heard the anchor drag alarm at 5 am, bolted up out of bed, and launched himself into the cockpit. We were fine. Still attached to the mooring ball, but the wind had shifted and we were swinging in a different direction.
All along the planning stages and throughout this journey, people have been warning us about the pigs. Aggressive. They bite. They’ll try to climb into the dinghy. They are more active in the morning. So we had ample warning and more than an ounce of caution when we approached their beach at 7:30.
We had brought with us two packages of celery and a ginormous bag of carrots. There was already a dinghy at the beach, so as we approached we could see pigs running along the beach to get to the humans and their food.
Once we got the dinghy on the beach, we all hopped out with the veggies and the pigs came ambling over to us. There were some very large pigs, medium and small pigs and we even caught a glimpse of a baby.
We fed the enthusiastic pigs and did judge them to be quite eager about the meal. One did try to board our dinghy, but other than that, we felt that most of the warnings people gave us were overblown.
We returned to the boat to grab money and our empty water gallons, and got right back into the dinghy to go to the marina. We refilled 6 gallons of water, paid for our mooring ball, and walked to the grocery store to pick up a few items.
Back at the boat, as we were getting off the dinghy, a man in a speedboat approached us, wanting payment for the mooring ball. We explained that we had paid at the marina, and Soloman said that we had paid the wrong people. He told us that we needed to pay him $40, and go back to the marina to get our money back.
So we paid him. But our dinghy is slow and we were wanting to leave so we did not do as he suggested and get our money back. Instead, I phoned the marina office, left a long winded message, and they promptly returned my phone call and our money.
By the time we untied from the mooring ball, I had our money back. Our spirits were up, and we were ready to set sail. We motored away from Staniel Cay, with all of the mega yachts, and set sail.
The day today was very similar to the afternoon yesterday, except with sun. Lots of speed and time spent heeled over.
We got to our destination at Shroud Cay by 3 pm, easily found and picked up a mooring ball, and got ready to go out in the dinghy. The boys all were game to take the dinghy into the mangrove. I wanted to be in the water snorkeling, so we mapped out a plan that everyone was comfortable with, and the dinghy crew dropped me off at the beach to snorkel for the afternoon.
At first, it wasn’t very exciting. The sand and water were beautiful and picture-perfect clear, but there was no sea life. So I swam towards the mouth of the mangrove channel and stayed to the side near the roots and that was where things got exciting. All the sea life was near the roots of the mangrove. I saw tons of fishes, and even saw and swam over the largest Southern Stingray I’ve ever seen. It was easily 6 ft in diameter.
I also saw Christmas tree worms, a much smaller ray, a huge sea star and a lot of interesting little fishes.
By 5 pm, I decided I was getting cold and pruny, so I started to head back to the boat, and I snorkeled the whole way. I was on board by 5:30, and then showered and had a snack while I waited for the boys to come back.
They got back from their excursion at 6:30, got themselves cleaned up and we made a nice dinner of quinoa, chicken and broccoli.
