We left our Anchorage and headed over to O’Brian’s Cay to snorkel an area called ‘The Aquarium’. So aptly named! We timed it perfectly to arrive at slack tide, so no current trying to drag us away. We saw all the fish. So many fish! Trumpetfish. Lionfish. Sargent Majors. Blue tangs. Bicolor Angelfish. Triggerfish. Yellowtail Parrotfish (initial phase). Blue Parrotfish. Black Durgeon… It really was like swimming in an aquarium.

From O’Brian’s we continued our day and headed down to Compass Cay. Here we got to see caves (who knew the Bahamas had caves?!?) to round out our evening. The following morning we went to Rachel’s Bubble Bath. I’m going to post a short video over on YouTube. Remember, we aren’t YouTubers. 🤣

After two nights it was time to move south again. This time, Big Major / Staniel Cay was our destination. Here we can provision, take trash to the dump, and get fuel. What we hadn’t counted on and are so appreciative of was a good nights sleep. There isn’t big current at this anchorage, and with the winds from the east the island provides shelter from the wind and the swell. We took trash to the dump, went to three different grocery stores, and ended up staying many more nights than intended. Mostly because it’s such a calm anchorage and there are friends here. Partly because Two Fish decided that she needed lots of attention. We went to the famous ‘pig beach’ which we will check off our list and have no desire to return to. As for the boat work, our port bilge is filling with water. We usually keep this pump off because it cycles continuously. However, it’s never been filling up like this before. Usually there’s an inch or two of water that hangs out in the bottom. Today the water is up over the bilge pump itself. More than once. Hmm. Lots of looking for a source. First, the water tastes salty. So looking for a salt water source. Hmm. Where’s the leak?

As Two Fish isn’t imminently sinking, we took a break with friends to snorkel Thunderball grotto. This has been used in two James Bond movies (Thunderball and Never Say Never Again) and was also in Splash. We saw beautiful coral and fish – including a huge angelfish. Plus how neat to be in the grotto with the sunlight streaming in through the hole above.

Back to work – we found the leak! It’s a leaking shaft seal (we have shaft drives – a shaft goes from our engine straight out to our propeller, and the seal keeps the water from coming in where the shaft exits the boat). Thankfully we have a spare seal already encircling the shaft, waiting for the eventuality of when the seal starts to leak. However, this does mean we have to intentionally remove the seal and allow the ocean to enter our boat while we replace it. Needless to say I’m not thrilled about that. Because there is no way it’s going to be as easy as the online video makes replacement look, because that’s not how things work here on Two Fish. True to form, not that easy. We had the emergency bilge pump out and ready, but thankfully didn’t need it. So thankful.

As we elected to stay another day, we got to see the Wahoo competition being held at Staniel Cay Yacht Club. The biggest Wahoo for the day was 72 pounds. The record is 126 pounds, I believe. After the fish are weighed, the teams go over and start processing the fish. The nurse sharks are there and ready! As nurse sharks are pretty docile, this allowed us opportunity to pet the nurse sharks. How cool! Again, I’ll try to put a video on YouTube.

After the Wahoo party (there was face paint, so totally a party!) we came home to make dinner. This requires the generator if I want to use my electric appliances, and tonight with Chana masala on the menu, I needed the instant pot for the dry chickpeas. Dinner was delicious. And as we also use our generator for hours each day to keep our AGM batteries happy, we kept the generator on for battery charging. In the way that is boats, things go wrong at night. Our generator stopped. Error 7. Hmm. No raw water (salt water sucked in to cool the generator in this case). Thank you generator for being so smart that you will turn yourself off when you get too hot instead of self-destructing. This started the hunt for the lack of raw water. The raw water seacock is open, check. The strainer isn’t clogged, check. The pump that moves the water to the generator is working, check. Head out to the generator locker. Nothing looks amiss from the outside. May I note that this happened at exactly 200 hours of run time, and Chris had said earlier in the day ‘I need to change the generator oil and filter’. He starts taking the generator housing apart. Still looks ok. We discuss just turning it back on versus taking it apart to check the impeller. We elected to check the impeller and we found the source of the problem! Yay! The impeller was completely shredded, exactly 200 hours after we installed it. So pat ourselves on the back we found the problem, but now we have to hunt for broken impeller bits as they can clog the heat exchanger. Boo. I’ve put Wren to bed by this point. It’s o’dark-thirty. Off come hoses. Off comes the drain plug. Off comes the heat exchanger cover. No impeller bits. Hmm. The manual explicitly says not to stick wires down the heat exchanger as we could damage the tubes. We cross our fingers and hope that the pieces were small enough to be sucked out with the coolant water, and reassemble the generator. Here we go. It’s late. We go to bed and figure we aren’t leaving tomorrow. One more night here.