Putting toilet paper needs and the fact that the world seems to have turned on its head and gone completely bananas since we left aside, we are working our last week aboard hard. Though it sounds as though we’ll have plenty of extra family time once home, given the school cancellation, we’re as always, squeezing every last drop of Chickadee goodness into our time here.
After our night in Guana we rounded the Whale very easily with only gentle swells, and had a beatifully lazy sail up to Manjack Cay. Home to only a handful of people, it has a number of great beaches on all sides and a weaving, winding mangrove system in its center, perfect for dinghy exploration.
We’ve paddle boarded, kayaked, visited the ‘stingray beach’, where pre-Dorian a local dive charter would stop and feed the stingrays, now trained to come ‘running’ when they hear an engine. It’s a terrible thing, really, but I will admit to loving the interaction, prescribed or not. Since their ‘food training’ hasn’t been in affect for six months, our dinghy’s hum only called a couple of rays, and they were game to bump into our feet and let the girls run their hands down their smooth backs, even though we were decidedly without fish to offer.
We spent a little time on the ocean beach, where the baby Portugese Man-O-War seem to be more and more often these days. We’ve learned from [admittedly stupid] experimenting that the baby babies haven’t developed their nemaocysts enough to pack any punch. Let’s hope it’s a gradual acquisition for them, as we continue to check larger sizes! (Hey! It’s more exciting than hording tp!)
We’re on to Green Turtle today, to sit on a dock and start the decommissioning process before we haul on Monday. Only as I type am I realizing that last night was our last ‘on the hook’. Ugh. I struggle to not keep rehashing the pain of the ‘lasts’, but… it’s kind of painful. It’s a crazy juxtaposition every year- the list of things I need to do that have to wait until I’m home is growing in a way that is now truly distracting, but sheesh, to turn this page and go so definitively into the other, less-floaty and more-chaotic version of our lives? Add COVID-19 to the mix, and… ROUGH.
As always, the thrill of marina living with the girls is a fun distraction, and they’ll be able to paddle and play in White Sound and at the Green Turtle Club’s pool, so their good spirits will help to keep ours as high as possible.
For now though, as always, food. Saturday breakfast must commence!
