Norman's Cay

We listened to the weather and talked with Dan to determine if we were going to leave. Since the wind would be on our noses we decided to stay another day in Norman's Cay. We lounged around and read until high tide around 11:30am. Then we went to the interior beach to meet the Hungarian family to give them a ride over to the submerged plane wreck to snorkel around. We found the interior section of Norman's Cay quite beautiful with the deserted island in the center with a single palm tree and on the east part of the island were some nice resort houses that reminded Dan of Scandinavia. We found lots of conch on the beach while waiting for Dan and family, but JR still wasn't up for eating any so we didn't take any. I found many beautiful colored living conch shells and returned them to their home. When they arrived we left to find the wreck and realized it was easy to see as the very top of the plane was exposed to the surface o the water. It was in the center of the bay so it took a few minutes for us to reach the wreck, which is why the Hungarian family couldn't row all the way there. We threw down our anchor and proceed to disembark the dinghy one by one to explore the wreck. The plane was a pretty good size and we saw tons of coral and fish around this man-made reef. Don't get me wrong, the plane missed the runway by a lot and crashed there instead of it being placed there on purpose. We saw a large barracuda casing the joint and making sure we didn't try to invade his territory or eat his fish. This was the first time we have snorkeled at a wreck and it was very cool. :) Some fish were very friendly and came up to us swimming around to investigate us while others were very shy and stayed in the shadows of the plane. We really enjoyed our time and then when we were all done we all piled back into the dinghy and were on our way back to shore. We passed by the typical deserted island in paradise and decided to stop by to check it out. We found the softest sand on the beach here it was wonderful wiggling our toes in the best sand we have encountered so far. The island was very small with one palm tree and rocks on one side while the soft sand covered the rest of the island. We enjoyed the cool waters and took a quick stroll around the island before heading back to the other beach to drop off the Hungarian family because the current was getting strong. So we left them at the beach and we headed back around towards our boat and due to the searing sun we took a break and soaked in the clear, cool blue waters on the beach before finally heading back to Frodo for lunch. We had some oranges on salad, the crab with butter from yesterday (it was so good), and JR cracked open the coconut we bought back in Nassau. We drank the water and ate some of its flesh, which was quite good and had a underlying sweetness. After lunch, I read while JR took a nap. Then we began our first attempt at making pressure cooker bread. We tried a recipe from the KISS Cookbook for Pressure Cooker Soda bread. We made the bread in about an hour and found the bread to be too dry and not fluffy at all, but it looked like bread with a crust and everything. We will need to tweak this recipe to determine the correct proportions of each ingredient or maybe even try a different recipe. This bread didn't call for any yeast so there was no time needed to for the dough to rise hence the soda bread using only baking powder and baking soda. Oh well, we made a valiant effort and just at a freshly pressure cooked slice of bread with some much needed butter and it was edible. We saw a ray swim by our boat and I took some pictures, but I am not sure how well they actually turned out because of the wind making waves in the water. We also saw a big fish swim by under our boat and we wondered what kind it was and where it lived. The mosquitoes were out at this time with the sun setting so I decided to retreat into the cabin into the safety of our mesh/screen. Then we proceeded to attempt our next culinary feat of the day and make some fish bouillabaisse from the Cruising Chef cookbook and we were enjoying a piping hot bowl of soup after 8pm. It turned out really well, but we didn't have any fish fillets to put in since we ate them all yesterday. We kept eating even though we were sweating up a storm. After we had our fill of soup we cooled down and I began the kitchen cleaning odyssey from the mess that was made from our cooking adventures. After a few hours of cleaning I sat down to read as JR was fast asleep for a while.