Visit with friends

We had fun playing with our friends at their river house. We got to play with some new (to us) toys. We hunted for and found lots of fossilized shark teeth. Conrad found the biggest one!

 

 

 

 

Things that go bump against your boat in the night

One night in Man Jack Cay, we heard a loud thump against our boat. We took out the high-powered flashlight to see what it was and there were thousands of these minnows and crabs teeming in the water. The crabs were trying to eat the fish, despite being smaller in size. We scooped up a bucketful of water so that Mark and Conrad could see them in the morning. We think the thump may have been a larger fish trying to eat the smaller ones and jumping against the boat.

New aquarium

We're back in the Bahamas and the other day we found more creatures for our temporary aquariums.

 We also used the box for the new charger to make a house for our sock monkeys.

 

 

Updates by Conrad

Conrad saw a baby spotted eagle ray in the bay, even though it is hard to see anything in the water here. He also saw a dorsal fin that could have been a large tarpon or dolphin. It's still fun to see the curly tailed lizards and iguanas that are everywhere. We haven't seen the boat lizards for awhile. They seem to come out when it rains.

Conrad finally has a tooth loose (his first). He is very excited because he has waited a long time for it to happen.

Fun with dirt

Who needs toys when you have a giant pile of sand? And trees.

 

 

Temporary aquarium

We make temporary aquariums to look at sea life we find. These are our finds on a recent trip to the beach. Mostly right now we capture slow-moving animals.

Here an oink, there an oink...

There is a beach near our anchorage where pigs swim out when they see your dinghy pull up because people feed them. They like bread the best but will eat fruits and some vegetables. Mark threw some food to them but Conrad didn't want to get near them after hearing about their razor sharp teeth. If you're not careful they will climb up on your boat.

Sunny days

Most of our days are spent snorkeling and playing at the beach. This is the wall next to the dinghy dock at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club. You can see a lot of fish from the wall. We really like the little fish that jump out of the water in front of the dinghy as we speed along.

Lobster attack

Conrad was very proud of the fact that he spotted these lobsters while Dad was fishing. He was using his mask and looking down over the side of the boat. Maybe one day he will start liking lobster. He does like the taste of the slipper lobsters.

Sea stars, Minecraft, and boat friends

Hi, it's Conrad again. My Dad found a sea star. I touched the sea star. The top was rough and kind of pokey. After that, my Dad told me to put the sea star back into the water carefully. This picture shows me putting it back in the water. I had a fun time at the beach.

Mark: First, we played Minecraft in the sand. I'll tell you how to do it. First you dig a hole. Then you make cave ins. We made zombies out of stone. Sometimes you can make booby traps if you want to capture the zombies. There's medical zombies too. They help people when they get hurt. They're not on any team though!

Conrad played soccer with friends from another boat. Mark played catch ball and made a sand city with our new friends.

Hitchhiker

This is the second lizard to hitchhike onto our boat via a bicycle. We had the bikes outside for a couple months and apparently some lizards made themselves comfortable on them without our knowledge. When Dad was trying to catch it the kids kept screaming, "Don't grab its tail! The tail will fall off and there will be blood EVERYWHERE!" Lizards sometimes drop their tails to escape predators and then the tail grows back later.

The first lizard (that we saw) eventually ran off the boat and leaped into the water. He did not realize that we were docked and that he could have used the docklines to escape. We did not see him again. Poor lizard.

This second lizard is running around the outside of our boat now. Unless he made a similar kamikaze move and jumped off.

No Name Harbor to Bimini

At Bill Baggs State Park, the raccoons seem to have forgotten that they are nocturnal. It may be because people feed them during the day. We climbed the lighthouse and played at the beach. We stayed in "No Name" Harbor.

The next day on our trip to Bimini, in the Bahamas, we caught a barracuda. Here's what Conrad writes:

We caught a big barracuda when we were on our way to the Bahamas. We didn't mean to catch it. We had fun. When my Dad tried to get the hook out of its mouth, we saw its sharp teeth. We used a squid lure to catch the barracuda. Its teeth were like sharp needles to cut through fish. The barracuda wasn't happy when we caught it. I backed away when it swung side-to-side. Finally my Dad got the hook out of its mouth. Before he threw it back, we took a picture of it and then we threw it back.
 

Puffy Pufferfish

 

We spent the day wandering around No Name Harbor. We went fishing, hoping to catch some dinner. We didn't catch dinner but Mark got a small fish and Conrad caught a pufferfish that puffed up on the dock. When we threw it back in the water, it unpuffed immediately and swam away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fishing and catching (!)

Conrad and Mark went fishing with their new nets and Conrad caught this fish. Not bad for his first time out. He almost caught a crab too but it was too wily. Mom and Dad were very surprised.

Treasure hunting with friends

Our friends who live nearby came to visit and introduced us to geocaching. We had heard about it but had never tried it before.  We had so much fun. We took the dinghy to the jungle-park across the way and found a cache with a travel bug that we will drop off in the Bahamas. Then we found two more really creative caches along the river. We look forward to finding more as we sail around.

Pet spiders

 

We are not buying any pets right now because we are not sure what the various customs regulations will be for bringing animals into other countries. So the boys are making due with natural pets. They have captured two pet spiders named "Spidey" and "Web." The two ginormous ones in the picture are not the ones in their jar, thank goodness. They have been capturing ants to feed their pet spiders and have been researching the various types of spiders and their characteristics. Life aboard our boat is not for the squeamish.