Octopi, Caves, and Goodbye, Oh My!
Our last full day at sea began with nerdy conversations about the molecular makeup of soap and the manner in which bananas ripen. While the former was simply conversation, the latter was brought on when I noticed the bananas were had bought on Sunday were not ripening any more at all. This was convenient because we’ve been on a hot, humid boat all week so none went bad but inconvenient because one of the bunches I had picked was green - I assumed it would ripen to perfection but instead they’ve stayed as green as ever. Apparently banana gas is used to start the ripening process and from there, it will continue on its own; they must not use it here and now we are left with some bananas unable to be eaten. If you’re curious on some more details, placing bananas in a bag with an apple can have the same affect as banana has on the banana.
After our little nerd session, we went for a morning snorkel post omelets. While we did not see anything new from the previous day, it was still beautiful and relaxing to be in the sea again. Our morning dip was followed by some Friday crossword attempts that was perhaps more successful than we anticipated but still a rough go. Eventually we decided we should set sail, and headed off from the beautiful National Park. This sail was only about 1.5 hours to our next (and final) destination and the women took the time to nap and relax, arising only when Chris exclaimed “time to tack!”. It’s a good thing we love tacking. Around the end of the sail, I became curious about speeds and what they meant and whatnot on the water and Lan and I were chatting with Chris, asking many questions that he knew the answer to. Eventually we did decide it was too much math when we had been napping a few minutes ago, a lot of latitude and degrees and speeds in there, but it is fascinating how they measure nautical miles and such.
Norman Island mooring is first come first serve so we chose a ball that was most likely in calmer waters and moored for the last time this trip. Even though it was the last one, it may have been mine and Lan’s worst mooring… we did get it first try though of course! This whole adventure though made us wonder how adept others are at mooring - particularly if they have crew pointing from the bow to the ball as Chris has told us to from day 1 or if that was just Chris messing with us. Immediately after mooring, we hopped in the dinghy to go snorkel but on the way sat and watched some other boats come in and moor. Turns out everyone points and we are not the worst out there!
The snorkeling at Normal Island is well renowned due to caves that dot along the coast and that is where we first headed to. There was plenty of dinghy parking there and we were easily able to start in the (very salty) water. This experience very quickly became the best snorkeling of the trip, a great way to end it. The colors of rocks in the cave were gorgeous, all shades of red. The fish were much bigger than we were used to seeing, and we even saw an octopus. He was walking along coral and rocks for a long while before swimming away and it was fascinating to see how quickly he was able to change his colors to camouflage into his surroundings. If he had not been moving, I’m not sure I would have noticed him! There were also a few big fish that appeared to be bullying him a bit and moving him out of where we found him; perhaps they were fighting for territory.
We did snorkel into the caves a bit and the water was colder, more clear, and showed such vibrant colors of both the fish and the rocks. We were careful not to touch anything as that is not only good practice, but I for one was terrified of fire coral. It doesn’t help that I have no idea what it looks like or where it is found but I know it’s in the area! The caves went back various distances but some quite far and we would go in until we started to get too scared, when we would freak out a bit and turn around. We spent quite some time snorkeling until a tourist boat pulled up and other people streamed out of it in the water in which case we made haste back to the dinghy. We had gotten quite privileged with our empty snorkel spots. Once we got out, Lan said how she felt that she was getting stung a bit in the water. Kerry had noticed what she thought was a tiny jellyfish at one point and upon research, it is very plausible that Lan was in fact being stung by jellyfish. Luckily they’re small enough that it doesn’t do much harm and the pain is not lingering; at least now she has a cool story!
Pretty much immediately upon arrival back to the boat, we grabbed Chris and headed to the floating boat bar in the middle of the mooring field. We each got a Willy T special (coconut rum and pineapple juice, what more do you need) and went to the top deck to jump off into the water. There was a sign up there that specifically said “no jumping or diving” that you crawled around and under a railing to get to the sketchiest platform you will ever see. Every time someone would jump, it would rattle. But nonetheless, we went out all four of us together, jumped, had screams from two members of the party, and climbed back onto the deck via an equally sketchy ladder. It was quite a fun experience.
After being back at our boat for all of 20 minutes, we got bored and decided to snorkel yet again but this time just from the boat. Kerry ended up finding a fish that had been caught in a fishing hook and the string was caught up in rocks so that it couldn’t move. This started operation save the fish and I swam back to the boat to grab a knife, took the dinghy over to them, and Kerry and Lan both took turns diving down to attempt to cut the fish free. They did eventually succeed and he swam off. Right after this, Lan spotted a turtle!! This marks the third we’ve seen but the first while snorkeling.
Back at the boat (again), we listened to Taylor swift, napped (Lan), read (me), cross-worded (Kerry), and sang along (Chris) until we decided to do a little photoshoot at the bow. One of the first things Lan said after rising was how the water really is so salty down here, she even had some salt flakes on her legs. I said I of course knew this already and had been telling them all week how salty it was and they would just laugh me off! :) The photoshoot did consist of outfit changes, passing around Lan’s hat that we have all since purchased for ourselves, and belly laughing at the poses in some of the photos. We even got Chris to take some of the three of us together in our matching shirts and we truly looked like a crew. All four of us wore these shirts for dinner which we actually went ashore for, as it was our last night.
It’s amazing how many comments we get when we are all dressed together; some may be insincere but I like to think they’re all envious of our blatant good style and looks ;). Dinner was delicious, with pasta jambalaya, paella, and sea bass with a pumpkin sauce. We were all sharing the dishes and talking about how it was our first time having seasoning aside from nutmeg all week. We also had wonderful drinks called “lime in da coconut” so of course that broke us off into song. Land sickness aside, it was one of the better dinners I’ve ever had on a vacation. I even enjoyed a bite of the sea bass!
One main topic of conversation at dinner was pirates. Lan, Kerry, and I are really thinking about entering the business and we’re curious about logistics surrounding that re: scurvy, living conditions, riches, etc. This of course led into a Wikipedia rabbit hole. We think one of the easiest ways into pirating would be to act as one of the people collecting money for mooring balls and to go around on our dinghy and attempt to get people to hand us cash, no questions asked. This came up earlier when Kerry and I realized we handed the guy on the dinghy $40 no questions asked when he asked us for the mooring fee - we think we could do that! We’ll keep you updated on our pirating.
The sunset at dinner was gorgeous, probably second best behind the Jersey Shore of the BVIs. We got to dinghy back in the sunset to more compliments on the shirt and end the last night together. It was a cool night and we were all so comfortable on the deck, doing crosswords, reminiscing on the sailing, and planning the next trip. Chris called it a night around 7:30 and the rest of us followed around 9. I will certainly miss Unreel come tomorrow.
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