Ted K. Wade

We visited Half Moon Cay, which is HAL's famous private island in the Bahamas, about 90 miles from Nassau. The time was announced as being one hour earlier, so I set my watch back, and sat on the verandah waiting for my "intermediate snorkeling" shore excursion. I went to the boarding lounge at 9:25, only to find out the time announcement was wrong, and that I had 5 minutes to board a tender, and get to the dock on the island to make the shore excursion. They moved me to the front of the line, and on the way to the island, I wondered how fun the snorkeling would be in the somewhat heavy seas - one wave threatened to go over the top of the lifeboat as we headed to the dock. Luckily, I missed the excursion, got a refund, and instead used the snorkeling area on the island. I got some good underwater pictures of colorful fish, and spent over 2 hours in the pellucid water.

There is a barbecue on the island that runs until 1:30. I advise you not to be late. I arrived at 1:20, picked up some good ribs and sausage, and noticed they shut it down right on time. The only downer of being on the island was they started folding up the lawn chairs around 2:00, even though we did not have to be off the island until 3:30.

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