We start this post on Feb 28th after anchoring in Big Majors.

We had stayed up visiting with Atlas until well past cruiser’s midnight the night before so we had a bit of a slow morning. Atlas’s Aria came over for a play while her parents went into town. When they got back Jesse and Matt went for a pretty long and intense dingy sail. They went out a cut between two islands at the edge of the anchorage and were only just able to make enough way to get back in again against the tide. They had a blast and provided much entertainment for the people watching from shore.

Later in the afternoon we all headed to the pig beach. I’m not sure how I feel about it. The piglets were adorable and seeing pigs swimming is neat but it’s also kind of weird and sad.

After seeing the pigs we headed over a nice little cruiser’s beach on the other side of the anchorage. While we were there we met a couple of other boat families both from Quebec. One of them was a family of six on a thirty-one foot boat which made Aria realize that maybe her lot in life isn't so bad after all.

The next day we met up with some other boats in the afternoon for some drinks on the beach. It was a very relaxing afternoon. Come sunset even more boats joined us and we had a delicious dinner cooked over a fire on the beach.

One of the reasons that we had wanted to come to this particular anchorage was to check out the Thunderball Grotto. It’s best to go at slack low tide which happened to be in the early afternoon. So we headed over there with our friends on Atlas and Fresh 2 Salty to check it out. It did not disappoint! Basically, it’s a cave that you swim into that has lots of coral and fish in it. It also has tunnels that you can swim through and emerge outside the cave. Unfortunately our underwater camera died a little while ago and so you'll have to take my word for how cool it was.

We spent the next couple of days waiting out some moderately heavy winds. The Aria’s made some boat name art and hung it at the cruisers beach.

Come Friday it was time to move on before the wind shifted to an uncomfortable direction. We pulled up anchor early and headed over the anchorage directly across form Staniel Cay. We had a really efficient stop, getting water and groceries and disposing of our trash. Shortly after noon we were all set and ready to head to our next anchorage at Rat Cay just 4nm away.

The wind was perfect so we put up sails and zipped along past all the mega yachts anchored near Staniel Cay. We even got to watch a helicopter land on Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht before taking off again and heading over to the support ship that housed all his toys. It’s pretty insane to see these giant ships close up. It’s also crazy to realize that at the end of the day we’re all out here doing the same thing.

We followed Atlas into Rat Cay as the depth was a little on the skinny side and dropped the hook behind a little motor cruiser. The anchorage was beautiful and Aria and I decided to do some snorkeling along the little islands we were anchored beside. Atlas had the same idea as us and before long the girls were happily swimming together. After an hour us moms were cold and done but not the girls. They decided to come swim off of our boat and kept it up until sunset.

It was a beautiful sunset and there were birds singing all around which was wonderful and not something we've heard a lot of in the Bahamas. We settled in for what we thought would be a very relaxing night at anchor.