Friday, January 18, 2008

Stardate 62048.79 - Vacation, Day Five

On Day Five (Tuesday) we sailed to Marina Cay were I got to practice docking as we needed to take on water. We spent some time on the beach while Loren napped, and did some snorkeling around the cay. I went a bit further out than Cheryl and spotted Diadema Antillarum, or as I prefer to call it, "Nature Says Don't Touch!" It reminded me that while I don't know what I'm doing in terms of snorkeling, nature has a way of making sure you understand what isn't safe to touch. That night we ate at the Pusser's restaurant for dinner. There are a lot of pictures I want to post for this day, so I'll put a little caption before each one.

Here Loren helps keep a lookout.


Here Thomas demonstrates to Betty the proper hand position for holding the wheel. Looks remarkably similar to the position for a car wheel!


Here Wei keeps an eye on all of us.


Loren wants fruit!


There is Marina Cay in the distance. We didn't have real charts (something we expected to be on the boat), but I'll purchase a set and take down with me next time. Luckily the planning chart, coupled with Cheryl's navigation ability and also GPS waypoints, was sufficient for us to get everywhere we needed to. It also helped that this was something like Thomas' fifth trip to the BVIs.


This is a pretty typical scene from the cockpit of the boat, except that I was usually the one on the wheel. Here I took an extended break to take a bunch of pictures.


At last! Beach! Shade! A place for Loren to nap!


The water was very shallow and clear around the cay.


Here I am, all showered and ready for dinner!


Cheryl cleans up nicely, too!


They had these cool blue lights on the trees on the path leading from the dinghy dock to the restaurant.


Loren loved her pasta!

I think this is one of those places that everyone visits, but I didn't find the snorkeling to be that great and I'd probably skip it the next time down. There are a couple of other areas around Marina Cay that might be worth checking out instead, the next time we go down there.

I just got a coupon in my e-mail from Footloose Charters with a discount if we book a trip by Feb 15th and go in the late March / early April time frame. Wonder if I can convince Cheryl we need to get back down there again so soon...?

Vacation Day Six

NYC

3 comments:

ac said...

Only thing worse than touching a sea urchin is eating it. Had it at a sushi restaurant a few years ago and man, was it disgusting.

Anonymous said...

You're actually not supposed to touch anything (especially coral) while snorkeling, and not even supposed to wear sunscreen (so a wetsuit or UV-protected shirt are good to have with you.)

Curt Sawyer said...

You mean I wasn't supposed to break off huge chuncks of coral to bring home as souvenirs? But I wanted to add them to my collection, along with my stuffed Hybrid Spider Monkey, my African Elephant tusks, and my California Condor!

Come on, I'm not an idiot.

The issue was that the water was getting so shallow that had I continued forward I would have brushed across an entire mini-forest of these things, so obviously I turned back.