It's a bit more complicated than your might think. I'll explain. The yacht we've chartered for this trip is a modern 52-foot catamaran made in France. These vessels are complicated, with miles of wire and plumbing, cutting-edge design and materials, and advanced electronics with touch-screen controls, all combined with traditional boatbuilding technology from the 1700s.

Good morning! Supermoon rise over Parrot Cays.

Things go wrong at sea, and they tend to quickly get worse. We had just a tiny taste of this early this morning. The electricity on this boat can run off of either the generator or the batteries. Some systems, like the water maker, run on only the generator. Other systems, like the outlets, run only on the batteries. Oh, except for the outlet near the awesome stereo system. That one only works when the generator is running. And the whole thing is controlled with the equivalent of an Atari system. To make a long story short, we could't make coffee first thing this morning. This is the equivalent of sinking the vessel.

Our awesome guests, uncaffeinated yet cheery, jumped in for a swim with us at 8am. We swam the Parrot Cays, a chain of six adorable little islands off Elbow Cay. SwimVacation takes all swimmers, so we often end up with a diverse group of swimming speeds. No problem; today we put 4 guides in the water, borrowing deckhand Zack for SUP guide duty. This is a swim we'll do again someday.

Fish tacos appeared for lunch, with a twist. The fish was grilled whole, and we forked the meat off the bones to build our tacos, along with red cabbage. It was a local hogfish, caught by a local guy just 2 days ago and iced on our stern. After lunch we motor-sailed to Great Guana Harbour to top off on snacks and groceries. I always like these little jaunts onto land, we meet the islanders, discover new things. A nice guy with a big golf cart gave us a ride back to the dock with our load of groceries. Whoops we tied up the dinghy where the ferry wants to park. No problem, mon.

We found Baker's Bay to anchor for the evening, a spot lined with very expensive though tasteful homes. We plotted a swim course and jumped in the crystal-clear water. I swam with Art and Stephanie, both confident, strong swimmers. Art spied some lion fish, and some massive sea stars appeared here and there, but the featured creature today was spotted by guide Dave. We later learned it was a Batfish, the craziest looking thing you've ever seen. It can't swim well, so it walks on the bottom. It has red lips. I'm at a loss for more descriptive words, but I'm sure Heather will insert a photo here to help me out. Interesting note: At Guana Island in the BVI, we have Fish Bats. At Guana Cay in the Abacos, we have Batfish! HA!

A What???!!!! A batfish!!! A SwimVacation first!

After the swim we were greeted with a pitcher of a fizzy citrus quencher nicely assembled by chef Chris. We sipped them over a beautiful sunset. Our chef then presented deconstructed chicken roti, his take on the classic Caribbean dish. The crew shared some sea tales with each other, and the laughter soon turned to sleep. We hope to swim with pigs tomorrow. Yup.

Jamie on a rare pause in the Sea of Abaco.

Batfish Crazy

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