Glow Worms Mating

We enjoyed sailing down here with the glow of a full moon and now for two nights, we’ve enjoyed a glow from Odontosyllis enopla. Three to six nights after the full moon, an unusual phenomenon occurs in the ebbing tide of the Caicos Banks. About one hour after sunset for about 15 minutes, a marine worm performs its sparkling mating ritual. As the female releases an egg mass, it spirals to the surface , emitting a pulsating pale green luminescence. The male, also glowing neon green, does a zig-zag dance until he encounters the eggs and darts about creating an even brighter green “glow.” Unfortunately it’s their last dance! Last night there were more and tonight fewer, but still some fun “glow worms” to watch in the water after dark.

No glow in the sky though – we had hoped tonight to see the shuttle launch. It was pretty cloudy here and we’re quite far, but we watched the horizon after 7:43 (1943) with the hope of a glimpse. We had to settle for looking down at the glow worms.

Today we didn’t even leave the boat. It was a rough night in a very rocking and rolling anchorage – and it continued all day.

It was boat project day. Michael started on the galley sink which had “issues” draining last night. Then he tackled the barbeque grill which also had “issues” last night and gave Michael a rare hamburger (not something he is very fond of!). So he took that all apart and cleaned it thoroughly.

He then tackled a broken hinge on the lazarette (a large locker in the back of the boat outside that holds tons of “stuff”). That took a lot of time and heartache. That was a successful project.

The sink issue continued after Barbara opened a drawer under the sink and it was filled with water – not a good thing. So then Michael ended up trying to put a new hose on – but these boat builders obviously never have to repair the boats. It was simply humanly impossible to reach one end of the hose without taking out the entire sink. With much frustration and #$@&^%$ … he successfully completed that project.

The grill however, didn’t work tonight when we tried to grill some chicken – so back to the drawing board on that one. Barbara in the meantime was faithful hander of tools and holder of parts and panels. She was also re-washing things from sodden drawers and was looking for some missing memory sticks (flash drives). They are L.O.B. (lost on board).

More pictures are posted on the web page. Still more to come from the Bahamas.

Happy Sunday everyone.