One of the things about cruising is you need to plan your resources including food, fuel, supplies and water. On Amaruq we have 2 water tanks for a total of 60 gallons plus 3 x5 gallon jerry cans we carry on deck. This will last us close to 3 weeks if we're careful about our consumption.

The jerry cans enable us to take them ashore in the dinghy for refills whenever we are close to a port that has water. While we've been spending time with Lynn and Larry we had the luxury of being able to refill our tanks from their water maker. This device can make fresh water from salt water water via a high pressure pump which forces water through a salt blocking membrane. Because there is a series of filters involved in their system, it needs to be used on a regular basis or pickled (cleaned and stored) so bacteria doesn't breed in the filters.

Their system makes 40 gallons an hour and they have to run it and they run it every other day so we are actually helping to use their surplus water so they don't have to pickle their system. It works great for both of us as it helps keep their water tanks supplied with fresh water and keeps us from getting into dire straits looking for water ashore in remote places where there isn't any.

https://youtu.be/oFXgiPdd1fk?si=u_5AswJj02xhz1w7

If you've been following the news lately apparently there have been a few shark attacks in Florida and the Bahamas lately. Of course this attracts media hype but when you actually find out what happened, it ends up being human caused due to poor choices made. People decide to go swimming in marinas and other places where sharks are used to feeding on fish remains at cleaning stations or locations where sharks are fed for tourist attractions. So a person jumping in the water and splashing around to a shark is like a dinner bell!

As I mentioned a few posts back we seem to see sharks congregating around our boats in some anchorages late in the day which could be an indication of dinner scraps being thrown overboard by boaters ringing the bell for the sharks. So no swimming for us in these situations so we don become the dinner menu special.


A couple of days back we went for a beach picnic on nearby island Norman's Pond Cay. It had a very long deserted beach with a lot of conch shells, both live and dead at the surf line. Conch have the spiralled shells people like to bring back as souvenirs. Conch is also a food source a lot of people like to eat down here, although we don really care for it. They are easily caught and you have to cut the shell open in a certain spot to get the actual animal out. However f you can find a shell where the animal died of natural causes, the shell is in tact. Boaters like to find those and make a horn out of them which is traditionally blown at sundown in many anchorages. We found 2 smaller ones that were in tact but found they didn't smell too good so we ended up donating them to neptune.

While we were chillin' on the beach we saw a very unusual, for here at least anyway, sight of a fully loaded tandem kayak being paddled by. They came ashore just down the beach from us so we went down to offer them our spot, which had the only shade under some trees on the beach. It turned out they were a younger couple from Calgary who were out paddling the islands and camping out! Not sure I'd want to be kayaking in the ind and waves around here but good on them. They were very appreciative of us giving up our post for them to camp for the night.

Today's shot is us walking a sandbar at low tide. It was a large area where the water was less than 2' deep for close to a square mile! there were lots of sand dollar shells and at 1 point we saw a fairly large nurse shark approaching us but once he got close he decided we weren't food so he diverted off in another direction. you gotta be careful walking and do the stingray shuffle.

https://www.visitflorida.com/travel-ideas/articles/outdoors-nature-florida-stingray-shuffle/