Front Porch Sittin' with the Fentons: Sailing Trip Day 9: Snorkeling Norman Island and Soper's Hole

So the whole wrapping up the Sailing Trip posts by Wednesday of last week didn't happen. We have been busy busy busy over here! Kyle was studying for his first Pediatrics test all last week, and I have been busy editing photos for an engagement session I did earlier in June. We had a much needed getaway at the lake for Father's Day weekend this weekend, and now we are feeling recharged and ready to get back into the swing of things. So here we go with the recap of Day 9 of our Sailing Trip!

We spent the first half of our day on Day 9 snorkeling, starting things off with The Indians, which are four rock formations located near Norman Island. (All snorkeling photos taken by Zach).

This is a group shot Zach got of us snorkeling at The Indians, from L-R: Christina, Fred, me, Kyle, Jenny, Eric, and Lynn. It's one of my favorite pictures from the trip! After we took this photo we all started swimming back to the boat, and once most of us were safely on board Zach told us that he saw a 3-ft. baby reef shark under the boat. Glad I wasn't in the water when he made that announcement!

From The Indians we drove the boat over to The Caves, which were right off of Norman Island as well. The water was SO beautiful around The Caves and perfect for snorkeling. The only drawback was that there were a ton of jellyfish floating around, but thankfully they were not the stinging kind. I managed to get stung by something anyway, but that didn't surprise me judging by my tendency to get hurt on past vacations (i.e. falling off a ski lift, getting run over by a surf board--true stories).

Yep, we swam right into that dark cave! Kyle's dad had a dive light that we used to look around in the cave, and this is the view from inside the cave looking out. It made me nervous at first because with my luck I would've been the person to get shocked by an eel or stuck by a sea urchin or something, but there really weren't that many sea creatures hanging out in there. It was a pretty neat experience!

After we were done snorkeling we headed back to the boat for lunch and relaxed for a little bit. I really enjoyed just soaking in the scenery around Norman Island. It was gorgeous!

From Norman Island we sailed over to Soper's Hole on the West End of Tortola. Some storms were rolling in, so the wind picked up and made it a rough ride across the Sir Francis Drake Channel. Nevertheless there were plenty of boats out at sea, including this beautiful two-mast ship (I think this photo might be my favorite from the trip!).

There was even a point when this sailboat got dangerously close to another one, but obviously their captains knew what they were doing. :)

Two Ships [Nearly] Collide from Lesley Anne Fenton on Vimeo.

Eventually we made it safely to Soper's Hole, with enough time to spare to go shopping before dinner. While shopping I found this really cute one-shoulder top (at 50% off!) that I'm wearing in the last photo, and Kyle and I also found a cute Christmas ornament to start our tradition of buying an ornament at all the places we travel to. Can't wait to see it hanging on our tree this Christmas!

That night we had dinner at The Jolly Roger, and I ordered the specialty lobster pizza. It was really good and super filling, which meant leftovers for lunch the next day! This was the last dinner with our group all together, since Fred and Christina had to leave the next day. Even though the trip was almost over for them we still had another adventure-filled day ahead of us!