Don't give me no dirty looks.
Your father's hip, he knows what cooks.
Just tell your little friends outside,
you ain't got time to take a ride

Yackety Yak (Don't talk back)

Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller/The Coasters

Great Guana Cay

From the Captain

Man-O-War to Great Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas 8.4 miles.

Guana Cay is our next stop up the chain of islands from Man-O-War. It is eight-and-a-half miles and a world away. If Man-O-War is the aging parent you visit in the rest home, Guana is the guy you'd like to have a beer with. And you would, too. All the alcohol that is not sold in Man-O-War seems to flow here. The island is bookended by two well-known beach bars, Nippers to the east and Grabbers to the west.

Nippers boasts a pig roast on the beach on Sundays. Not by coincidence alone, we have arrived on Saturday.


We entered Settlement Harbour, found a mooring, and took the dinghy into the dock. Right off, we came to the grocery, small but very well stocked. We bought a bottle of safflower oil here and admired the fresh vegetables. We walked along the harbor on the familiar narrow street, past neat houses, dodging golf carts. We passed the requisite bougainvillea (does one ever tire of these?), a few gift shops, a tiki bar, and the public docks to arrive at Grabbers. Here, between the outdoor bar and the pool and around the tables near the outdoor grill, we continued to the beach.

Tan your toes in the Abacos

Lounge chairs and hammocks among the coconut trees face the beach. The view is to the west, out over Fisher's Bay and the Sea of Abaco, toward the sunset.

We promptly returned to Luna and moved her to a mooring here. The bay is wide open, and hence the moorings are not advisable in a west wind. But the forecast is for light north and northeast winds for the next few days, and the expansive view is lovely. We have not been in such an open anchorage since Little Farmers Cay, and we've missed it. The view is better, and the gentle swells of the Sea of Abaco will rock us at night in a way that doesn't happen in a protected harbor. We've come to like the easy rocking.

The sun treated us to a glorious show in its descent. In Mangoes Marina, we had met Ron and Sharon on their Morgan 51. Ron is a man with a Sawzall and a passion for conch-blowing. He cut the end off one of the shells we collected and sanded the opening. He epoxied the hole that was made when the conch was removed from its shell. Like an out of state license plate, we now bear the true mark of a tourist--a conch shell trumpet.

And I have been practicing daily to make the thing work. "You blow it like a trumpet," said Brian, who used to play the trumpet. He advised that you don't make farting sounds with your lips when you blow through the opening in the end. "You make your lips vibrate," said Ken, one of the conch musicians at Marsh Harbour. Sage advice, but not particularly helpful, especially if you've never played a trumpet.

At first, I could make the sound of a gerbil who has been fed too many baked beans. Then an elephant with a really bad cold on the heels of a moderately debilitating intestinal virus. "Perseverance furthers," cites the I Ching. "Not yet," notes the commander, her ears assaulted by another failed attempt.

However, at the sunset over Fishers Bay, I picked up the shell and produced a clear note for the first time. And for a very brief instant, I had it. This is still a work in progress.

The next morning, we motored the dinghy to the beach at Grabbers and walked through the town to the beach on the ocean side. The Atlantic beach is wide and long. The sand is fine and soft. You don't need to walk far to feel you've had a good work out. We went a mile or so in each direction and ended at the set of stairs that leads up to Nippers.

Looking down the beach from Nippers

This is a lively place with a great view of the beach. It is a bar and a Bahamian restaurant. There is a pool and a gift shop. It is loaded with tourists. We plan to return later when our friends from Mar-A-Lago and Amarone catch up with us. They are leaving from Hope Town on the high tide. All have expressed an interest in the barbecue. The commander will be satisfied with a fresh lobster salad--and who wouldn't?

Outside the small settlement, there are vacation homes extending in both direction. We were imagining this would be a great place to rent a cottage for a time in the winter. And then, after our friends came, we returned to Nippers and found it absolutely full of young people, apparently on spring break. Party central. The official drinking age in the Bahamas is 18. There was dancing to music too loud, and the atmosphere was not conducive, one might say, to the dining experience we had planned.

We returned to Grabbers. Here too there was a drunken party with loud music for those over age 25. It was like Nippers with larger bathing suits. We took to the boats and retreated to the harbor. Since we didn't want to eat in town, we shared resources with Brian and Jane and had tacos with chicken and the left-over wahoo we had grilled the night before. Far enough away from the noise at Grabbers, we were entertained by another spectacular sunset.

Sunset over Fishers Bay, Great Guana Cay

The moorings at Guana Cay are maintained by Troy Albury (of the Man-O-War Alburys), owner of Dive Guana. Here he runs diving and snorkeling trips, rents golf carts and bicycles, and manages rental properties. Luna is moored near his dock. We signed up for a half-day snorkeling trip in the morning. But before leaving, I visited  Guana Cay Hardware, a large outfit in a new metal quonset hut conveniently right up the narrow street from Dive Guana.

I am coming to believe that you can gauge the amount of second-home development on these little cays by the size of the island hardware store. By that measure, Guana Cay is being developed rapidly. Troy's wife, Maria, who helps out in the dive shop, confirmed this. "In the last year, the size of the homes being built has tripled," she notes. The owners are mostly Americans. Score one for the American economic recovery. Score zero for a  social oncologist, concerned that the malignant megamansions of southern Florida might metastasize to the little Bahamian islands.

The hardware store has a propane refill station, and I took Luna's tank here. The boat never came to Man-O-War to pick up our tank last week. Getting propane in these Abaco islands has not been easy, nor fast. The staff offered to refill it while I waited, though I was happy to leave it until after our snorkel trip. I believe this is the easiest propane source in all the Bahamas.

Troy and his helper, Colin, took us and a couple from Milwaukee along with eight scuba divers to a series of reefs off the northeastern end of Man-O-War Cay. He navigated his large dive boat through the coral heads to a mooring in a clear spot with reefs visible all around. This is part of the Bahamian national park system and a protected area. The reefs and fish were wonderful, though we weren't able to dive deep enough to see or pet the large groupers as the scuba divers did. We did see several sea turtles grazing in a grassy area that Troy pointed out to us.

Troy Albury, owner of Dive Guana

We visited two separate reefs and were in the water for an hour at each one.The air temperature was low 70's, the water almost 80 degrees. We were not wearing wet suits. Several times, I turned to the commander and asked if she was cold. "Yes, freezing." she noted. "Should we go back?" "No!" she insisted. The snorkeling was that good.

The commander with snorkel off Man-O-War Cay