Bud went out fishing in the dinghy this morning. I stayed aboard in the shade with Fuzzy. Bud said he was going to catch fish for supper. Right now Bud is making mushroom risotto, so you can see how successful he was.

After lunch we took the dinghy to find the creek that is supposed to be a good place to explore. We found it and approached the entrance carefully. There were some small breakers, we weren't sure just where to take the dinghy in. We did manage to get in and then wound our way back, picking out the channel as we went. Most of the interior of this island is mangroves with creeks winding through. These creeks are wide in many places, but a channel deep enough for a dinghy may be only a small part of the open area. Once we got up a ways we saw another dinghy further up, and those folks were paddling. So Bud shut the engine off and put the oars in place and started to row.

We took a different creek, so we didn't disturb the folks that were already there. We saw a few birds, many, many small fish, and one small shark. By the time we saw the shark we were in really shallow water. I had slipped forward part way off the bow to see if the bottom was muddy or sandy. It was sand. I found that I could sit on the forward edge of the bow and use my feet on the bottom to pull us along. I was doing that for a while trying to catch the shark. Not surprisingly, I was not successful. Bud got a picture of that, though, and I will post it with this entry when I get back to the Internet, because it's a good shot of the interior.

We hadn't seen any turtles, and there are supposed to be turtles, so Bud voted to go back and try snorkeling. It was slow rowing back out because the tide was still coming in. You're advised to explore the creeks at high tide, so we'd set off about an hour and a half before high tide. That way we wouldn't get stranded by the falling tide. It would have been easier if we'd stayed until slack tide, or actually come back out with the falling tide, but it was pretty hot, and there was no shade. On our way back out we did see a turtle.

As we came around the bend to the outlet, there was a fishing boat, around 20 or 22 feet long. He'd made it in! Then there were three more dinghies, all in a line. I was just as glad we missed the crowd.

Bud did go snorkeling, later. He explored some of the coral near shore here, but there wasn't much to see there. We both washed in the ocean and rinsed with our cockpit shower, so at least we're relatively clean again.