After Max had come to the realisation that snorkelling in a marina at Bimini wasn’t as good as that to be had elsewhere, the kids agreed to do another big sail. 85 NM from Bimini to the Berry islands, across the Grand Bahama Bank.  The Bank is what the Bahamas are: a shallow sandy plateau in the middle of the Atlantic which makes the water look a brilliant Cerulean Blue due to the white of the sand and limestone only 3 or 4 metres below the surface. We have a keel that’s 2 metres, so for much of the time we were sailing with less than a metre below us. Hoping that the dark patches were weed and not rocks.

So clear that star fish can be seen on the bottom!

At 5 o’clock we anchored in 4 metres in the middle of nowhere, nearly 80 km from the nearest land in either direction, and planned to watch the sun set into the ocean and rise again out of the ocean. Unfortunately the kids had a meltdown after sunseand we spent the next two hours trying to prevent them killing each other, or worse, smashing each others Lego creations. We have been dealing with these fraternal violence episodes every three days or so, its almost a pattern you can set your watch by, and we haven’t successfully averted them. At the time they seem so major that we want to go home, but an hour later they are lovely again. Exercise and separation are the only probable cures, but we haven’t been able to provide them easily.