Sheila got here!!!!! I was so excited about the prospect of having females back on the boat I couldn't stand it! Sheila arrived Saturday afternoon as well as our group for the week. The Van Der Zee's climbed aboard to celebrate easter week and it was a blast. Edo and Mary Beth have been close friends with Bruce and Sheila for years and their two sons, Jake and Pete are very easy going and fun. Johnny, houseboat Mark's son also joined us on the trip for the week. We had a long sail all the way down to Staniel on Easter morning but it was great being on the water. I learned that Pete rows for his HS back in Jacksonville FL so we had some crew talks. Mary Beth and Edo were really fun and had some great stories all week. Jake was so adventurous, even at 12, and wanted to do any and everything possible and Pete was always up for it as well. I got to swim around in thunderball cave which was very cool and then run the dingy for the guys to jump off the island... next time I will be jumping! We spent two days in Compass Cay where I got to enjoy swimming and hanging out with Cheyenne and watching a couple movies with 2 guys who work crew on a yacht. It was really nice having people my age to hang out with. Our first night at compass everyone was hanging out on the dock from all the other yachts. Two of them the owners were gone so all the crew were able to hang out and someone brought a huge cooler full of beer so it was a good time.
Jake Catching a barracuda
Us playing in Rachel's Bubble Bath
Driving the Skiff...
After Compass we spent a day sailing around the outside of Compass and went snorkeling at Rocky Dundus (or Dungeons in my mind) and Cheyenne joined us. I dropped my snorkel under the boat while getting in and immediately a barracuda was inspecting it. I don't know if I have mentioned the fact that I have seen way to many barracuda and have been swimming with them 3 different times, one actually about to strike me. Needless to say barracudas scare me more than sharks because they will attack you just to, like out of spite. So anyway Cheyenne is even more terrified of them so she is clambering onto the boat super fast, I am pretty intimidated at this 3 foot barracuda 12 ft below me. Sheila insists that if I just jump in with a really large splash it will get scared off. I make the biggest splash possible and when the bubbles clear it hasn't moved an inch. It just watching me out of the corner of its eye, hovering over my snorkel. In the end it swims off and I get my snorkel and force Cheyenne in the water for 10 minutes of snorkeling. We then hit Rachel's Bubble Bath at the tip of Compass where there is a pool and the water splashes over the rocks into it and its really fun. We played in that for a while getting swept out by the waves and it was fun. Jake of course was climbing all over all the rocks as well. We then headed back into the Exumas Park and moored right by Johnny Depp's Island, unfortunately he wasn't home. Then we snorkeled around a reef called the aquarium because it is so full of fish. It was really great. That night we studied the constellations because Edo had this phenomenal application on his computer that told you all of the stars where you were, you just plugged in your area and what direction you were facing. It was so neat. Edo is a pilot for a cargo plane company so he has been all over the world. We spent a lot of evenings hearing him talk about amazing places he went and looking at some fantastic photos of things that he got to see. I kept thinking, man why didn't I become a pilot, but then I would remind myself how much I actually hate flying. The next day we sailed up to Wardrick and spent the day hiking around the island. I was somewhat anti-social because I couldn't put the book I was reading down. (Alter of Bones) Then Friday we headed back to Nassau and had some delicious chinese food and hung out before they had to leave Saturday morning. I have really started to not like Saturdays, I don't like saying goodbye to people, but we get to see them in Florida when we do our sail up!
Looks like fun!
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