I got up at 6 in the morning, and despite being slower than usual, we still managed to start moving the boat by 6:30am, landing on the ideal mooring ball at the Indians at 6:45am. The water was a lot clearer this time then when we were there a week before, and we had a nice long snorkel, with me finding the
snorkeling tunnel which was a swim through this time, and doing it three times. Returning back to the boat, we ate a quick snack and then repositioned the boat to the other side, on Pelican Island for more snorkeling.
Pelican Island has much the same wildlife as the Indians, but with a wall so scuba diving is also feasible. What I hadn't known was that the mooring balls off the Indians were all marked as commercial only. Well, with no one else nearby, we grabbed one of the commercial balls and then used it for a whole hour. During that time a commercial dive boat came by and did a dive, but no one complained.
After that, it was almost time to visit the Willy Thornton. The restaurant was only open at noon, and we arrived after a mere 15 minute motor in the Bight, and grabbed the nearest mooring ball. It was 11:40pm, but we could see activity indicating that it would open soon. We were close enough to swim or paddleboard to the restaurant. Mark and Mingkuan decided to paddleboard, and I got out my snorkel (no fins), and debated whether to swim while folks lowered the dinghy and got ready to motor over. The decision was made for me when Kathryn said "the towel just fell off the boat!" I hurriedly jumped into the water and dived from the towel.
Well, since I was already wet, I decided to just swim to the Willy Thornton, which conveniently had a swim ladder down. I didn't beat any of the paddleboarders to the restaurant. Once on board, we ordered food on one side of the restaurant, ordered drinks on another, and walked upstairs to hang out and dine. There was a Puerto Rican family who were jumping off the upper story of the Willy T, blatantly ignoring the "no jumping or diving" sign. Their boat was the "Rum Away", and we would end up parking near them tonight.
Lunch over, Kathryn bought some souvenirs and paid up. Having seen the Puerto Rican family ignore the "no diving" sign, I was obliged to jump off the upper story of the boat to swim back to La Badine, and so I did that. After I landed in the water, I saw that Boen had decided to jump as well. Arturo had to join in the fun. I swam back to the boat, and then we motor'd back to Privateer Bay. I noticed there was a mooring ball even closer to the Caves, but when we tried to pick it up there was no pennant, so it was broken. We ended up on the same mooring ball we were at again.
I then called the Navigare customer service number again to get them to come fix Massi's cabin. We then went for a snorkel out to water point. That snorkel wasn't actually very good, just for the novelty. We came back to La Badine discover the kids were done with paddleboarding and that Navigare's chase boat had showed up to fix the leaking cabin. I took the paddleboard and went out paddleboarding to water point and the caves, instructing Stone to also complain about his head being broken. I went out to the caves as well and discovered that Arturo was also out paddleboarding. Later he would tell me he saw the crew dump the contents of the sewage overboard while fixing the toilet.
The chase boat showed us pictures of the stuck toilet with toilet paper wrapped around the macerator. It probably came from the previous charter, but the way marine toilets are, if you stare at them wrong they break. The boat was in surprisingly poor shape for only a 3 year old boat, but if you're in charge everything's your fault. Massi told me she'll bargain with the base commander and ask for them to waive the toilet fee in exchange for her waiving her fee for the broken cabin which wasn't fixed o 2 whole days.
I had one last snorkel and we ate whatever was leftover food. We had too much bread, instant ramen, and various canned foods, but all the desserts were gone. We had extra milk for cereal the next morning, and just enough coffee for one more morning. One last star gaze, and we had to start packing our luggage for the return of the boat early tomorrow. I expected it to take 45 minutes to return the boat, but I figured there was a chance to catch an earlier 10:30am ferry instead of the 12:00pm ferry if we returned the boat early.
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