After saying goodbye to Oud and Brice we put up our sails and sailed 5nm north to a new spot off the reef. Sailing through the reefs is magical. At one point I was standing at the bow with the autopilot remote in my hand keeping the boat away from the brown bits and, for good measure, the green bits. The green is where the sand is rising but is usually safe to traverse but there are risks of rocks. Our garmin maps seem very accurate in terms of where all the rises are.<\/p>\n

Olafa soon arrived at the same spot. We knew they were heading here too but were glad of the company. We hailed them and invited them over for drinks after dinner to which they agreed.<\/p>\n

After lunch, changing the water maker filters and a rest Helen and I went snorkeling. It wasn’t as excellent as our guide book suggested but still pretty good. We saw a turtle, a couple of large rays, a large barracuda and a couple of tuna along with many other smaller fish. The seafloor changes depth quite abruptly from a couple of feet to fifty within a short distance. Some of the interesting things were found on the margins.<\/p>\n

Back on the boat we grilled chicken on the barbecue and cleaned up. With guests coming Helen forced me to tidy my desk – something that had been bugging her more than me for a while.<\/p>\n

Oud and Brice stayed for a couple of hours and we had a good time. They were getting quite tired after their overnighter and ordeals of the day so we bid them farewell having exchanged\/loaned each other a useful item each. Brice lent me some notes about sailing in Columbia and I lent him my contact cleaner to hopefully repair his laptop keyboard.<\/p>\n

We finished the evening with a bit of stargazing. The objective was to spot the Andromeda nebula – the nearest major galaxy to our own. With the aid of Stellarium, fantastic free software, we were able to find it as it was just visible to the naked eye. With the astronomical binoculars the sight was awe inspiring. If I remember correctly it’s something like 2 million light years away and the furthest object that can be seen with the naked eye. Helen sloped off to bed and I spent a little longer gazing with the binoculars. I found a couple of star clusters and had a look at one of my favourites – Jupiter. I love seeing the four moons arranged in a line, different every time you look. You can use Stellarium to see how the positions of the moons vary even each hour.<\/p>\n

Today we’re off to a group of islands called Francisquis. It’s heading into the touristy part of this park so we expect to lose the isolation. Olafa are probably following intending to stay there a few days.<\/p>\n

Footnote. Horror of horrors. I discovered last night that the track memory on our chart plotter is full and it’s overwritten the earlier data. That means we’ve lost the tracks from when we returned to Dignity up until just as we entered Margarita. Bugger.<\/p>\n