Wednesday 14 December – great snorkelling

It was a lovely peaceful night even if a bit rolly. We had our usual 10am cooked breakfast, always finished off with a delicious coffee and a morsel of toast with home made marmalade. We don’t eat again until supper.

We set off with all our snorkel gear and tried a couple of spots before heading to a shelf on the reef. We hadn’t been in long when we knew it was good because there were so many more fish. By far the most we have seen so far. A highlight was seeing a shark, we think if must be a nurse or reef shark just lying under a big head of coral. We did a very long snorkel both sides of the reef, lots of lovely coral. Sadly we haven’t seen a turtle yet, there is so much sea grass for them, just hope they haven’t been hunted out.

Looking back at PolePole from our snorkel trip

Back at the boat Rowan had contacted the marina where we were planning to haul out end of January, to clean our bottom before going to Galapagos, and to fix our previously damaged dagger board. Fortunately they can take us out this week end and are good at fibre glass repairs according to all Rowan’s research on the internet. So we just cross fingers it is repairable. A slight change to our plan so we have decided to head to the marina, it is 90 miles away at a place called Shelter Bay just next to the canal. It was going to be pushing it to do it in a day in these light winds. So we decided to head off in the afternoon to cover a bit of distance to make tomorrow a little easier going.

We had a good motor sail over to Lemmon Cays and anchored near Dog island, which was lovely and calm with quite a few other boats. Luke and George went paddle boarding around the little islands. Late afternoon some local ladies came to sell us some more molas (embroidery work), I can’t resist it and like helping out a good cause. George did a bit of Christmas shopping so I think they had a very good visit. So hard not speaking Spanish, but we finally discovered they were asking if we had any cooking oil. Rowan had read about them wanting cooking oil, we had bought a whole lot of bottles in Santa Marta specifically to give them. So we were very pleased to hand over a bottle.

Not quite sure which is Dog Island here in the Lemmon Cays

Home to the ladies who sold us molas

Luke and George paddle boarding

The ladies beautifully beaded legs

Setting up shop on PolePole

Departing at sunset

I made a Spanish frittata for supper as we have way too many eggs and they are definitely getting old. Now we are going into the marina we can re-provision at the supermarket a bus ride away. We had only intended to be there end of Jan, which is why we had bought so many eggs! Early to bed as we plan to leave early at sunrise