From the Captain   Down to Civilization

1/20/14 Staniel Cay

The front has passed, and we're due for a couple nice days before the next one comes. We move the boat closer to town and anchor just south of Thunderball Cave, a large natural cavern on one of the limestone islands in the harbor. It's a short dinghy ride to the beach next to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club. The little harbor looks so peaceful, we decide to cancel our slip at the Yacht Club.

This is a nice little place. The people in the settlement are nice. The marina has slips, sells gas, diesel fuel, and water purified and desalinated by reverse osmosis ($.40 per gallon). There is an airport for small planes and air service to Nassau and beyond. The yacht club (marina) has a restaurant and bar and several little cabins for rent on the harbor. Walk to the Atlantic side and look over the hill, and there are fancy houses being developed, a recurrent theme on these small cays. There is an exclusive club on Fowl Cay just north of here. You can stay in a cottage with an all-inclusive package for $10,000 per week.

There are three groceries on the Staniel Cay. The Blue Store, The Pink Store, and the Isles General Store. The commander walks up to all three. These are tiny, one-room stores. They're not really in competition because each sells slightly different goods. From the Blue store, we buy a quart of yogurt and a few limes.

The woman at the Pink Store is especially friendly. She tells Carol how to make peas and rice, a traditional Bahamian dish. She recommends bacon or pork, rice, peas, and thyme. Carol buys a can of pigeon peas to try it out. With the storekeeper's approval, she uses chicken stock instead of the bacon and adds a small piece of one of the goat peppers from Nassau. It makes a nice variation to the beans and rice meal. I add a few chunks of canned chicken meat to mine.

The proprietress directs us to Sandy, a local fisherman who lives around the corner. We find him at his house, but because of the rough weather, he hasn't been out and has no fresh fish to sell us.

A small subunit of the Royal Canadian Navy is here, of course. Eight of us meet at the yacht club for lunch. It's friendly, informal, Bahamian. Bar in the front. Open dining room behind. Ceiling fans. Burgees from visiting cruisers hanging from the ceiling. Photos of large fish and sailboats. Open to the outside through large screened windows. Turqoise waters and boats in the view. I have, what else, a conch burger and a Kalik. The commander has a fried fish platter.

Anchored at Thunderball Entrance

At low tide, slack current, the commander and I take the dinghy over to Thunderball cave. Anchoring the dinghy outside, we put on our fins and masks and snorkels and swim under the small arch that forms the entrance. This is underwater at high tide.

This is a magnificent place. Looking down, we're treated to colorful coral formations and even more colorful fish. The fish don't seem particularly mindful of intruders. The guidebook says to bring some bread crumbs or canned corn to feed them. We just watch.

The vault has a high ceiling, and there is another room through a passageway further on. There are other entrances to the cave, and shafts of light reach down into the sparkling blue water, illuminating the coral formations beneath. It would be a perfect movie set. In fact. it was a perfect movie set. Scenes from the James Bond movie, Thunderball, were filmed in here. This gave the cave its name. I'm not sure what it was called before. I'm anxious to see the movie, though.

light at the back entrance to Thunderball Cave

Colorful fish and coral in the cave

1/21/14-1/22/14 Staniel Cay, Bahamas

This is another nice day. Fairly warm, partly sunny, calm winds. There is another front coming tonight. This is the quiet before the storm. A typical frontal pattern starts with a calm, then the wind begins from the south, then turns clockwise through the west to the northwest to north. Tonight, predictions call for a strong wind  (22-30 kts) that will turn westward around midnight and gradually clock northward in the morning.

These cold fronts are coming through twice a week. We have two relatively calm days every week or ten days. Not what we expected, the weather continues to be a central character in this travelogue.

The marina is abuzz with news of the weather and plans for the blow. The yacht club is quite exposed to the west wind, and they suggest people leave today. Boats are leaving the harbor where we are anchored for more sheltered spots.

The group is divided on where to anchor. Some of the boats go north into a narrow passage above Staniel Cay. This is protected from all directions, but is on a channel to an inlet, so would be affected by tidal currents. We elect to return to Big Majors Spot, where we anchored two nights ago. This is protected from north and northwest. To the south and west, however, is open water for 50 miles. If the wind stays in the west, we will have a rough night. However, the anchorage is large and open with a sandy bottom. The anchor will hold well in the sand, and there is no significant current here.

Given the choice, we will take rocking in the wind over swinging unpredictably in the current. Twenty other boats, including Mar-a-Lago, feel the same. The afternoon is calm, but there is a growing sense of expectation and anxiety about the place. People are furling their flags, checking and double checking their anchors. Tying things down.

We dinghy over to neighboring boats to meet them and to see that there is enough distance between us. Our neighbors to the south are a couple from New Zealand who have been cruising for 10 years, heading west through Europe and across the Atlantic to here. To the east is a boat from Boston. The skipper says, "Chris Parker is too alarmist. I don't think it will be that bad."

It is just as predicted. The sea is like a mother with an unregulated bipolar disorder. You don't want her rocking your cradle when she's in her manic phase. Such was the state of affairs as the winds built from the west around midnight. The wind was consistent. Luna pitched in the waves. Confident in our anchor, we slept, though fitfully. Eventually, the commander placed a pillow over her head to block the noises of the internal halyards and wires banging on the inside of the mast and fell soundly asleep.

I have an internal clock that sets an hourly alarm when we have a difficult anchorage. I get up, look around, plot our position on the GPS, and make sure all is well. All is. Our anchor is holding, and we are not too close to our neighbors. On the iPad, we set a GPS point where we dropped the anchor. I can see our current position. It measures 148 feet from the anchor point. This is right. We have 110 feet of anchor rode and Luna is 35 feet long. Neither Luna nor the wind has shifted between 11 pm and 4 am. A line drawn from boat to anchor leads due west. Wind speed is measuring 18kts, gusting to 22.

Anchor line stretched tightly in rough anchorage

By morning, the line between boat and anchor is pointing more to the north northwest. The cove is still choppy. It will take a wet dinghy ride to go anywhere. So we stay aboard, reading and doing some small chores. We run the engine for an hour both to supplement the solar charger and heat up the hot water heater for a shower. We've been using our solar shower on deck after washing off in sea water. It's too cool and rough for a swim or an outdoor shower.

Jane from Mar-a-Lago calls on the radio to invite us over for happy hour. Their dinghy motor has stopped running and is over at the yacht club with Chubby, the repairman. Our skin is clean and desalinated, so we don't want to take even the short ride to their boat. Down below, we have a gin and tonic and some crackers with a hunk of Manchego cheese. Our stores are holding out pretty well, though lockers are noticeably emptier. The commander makes salmon cakes for dinner with peas from the freezer, and I grill a couple potatoes from the Pink Store.

Later, the wind has finally turned to the northeast, and the bay is quiet. Luna rocks gently. I turn in early and sleep soundly, making up for the lack of sleep the night before. I am up but once to check our position.

1/23/14 Staniel Cay to Blackpoint Settlement, Great Guana Cay, Bahamas. 9.5 nm.

Luna and the commander lean to the wind

The wind has moderated, and this is a delightful, sunny day. We pull up anchor, help Brian and Jane retrieve their dinghy motor from the  the yacht club,  reassemble the group, and sail down to Blackpoint. The wind is off our port quarter, the banks are fairly smooth. We are on a broad reach under sail only. It feels wonderful!

Blackpoint is just around the corner. Less than 5 miles away as the crow flies. Of course, the crow can fly over the series of reefs that sends us on a crooked course. By deeper water, it's 10 miles away. In other respects, it's a world away.

The first half of the Exumas have been sparsely inhabited. The cays are being bought up and developed at an alarming rate. David Copperfield owns at least one of the islands. In the view of some, he is part of a move to make the islands, as public trusts, disappear.  The wealthy developments do not cater to the cruisers. Anchoring off these cays has been like camping in the public lands of the American southwest. It's a wilderness experience.

Staniel Cay has a few stores and a marina. But you can't get a shower at the marina, and there are no public laundry machines in town. Blackpoint, on the other hand, is the first place we've encountered that seems to realize there is money to be made from the line of boats heading down the island chain.

Through history, white sails on the horizon have meant commerce to the Bahamians:

1814: "There's sails out there. Quick, Rolle, light the wrecking buoy. We'll drive her onto the rocks. Everyone, get the sledge hammers and wrecking bars. Get ready to launch the long boats."

2014: "There's sails out there. Quick, Rolle. Call Samson. Tell him to go out and get another load of conch and lobster and catch some grouper. Make sure there's enough propane for the fryer. Tell the women to set up the straw market. Herbert, make sure the bar is full; get another case of coconut rum and a few more cases of Kalik on the next mail boat. Turn up the ice machine.

Of course, in between these years the Bahamian islands have been a sea-centered thorn in America's side from the end of the pirate era. During the Civil War, Bahamian blockade runners provided a two-way conduit for Southern cotton and European manufactured goods. Then there was rum-running during the prohibition years and drug-smuggling for a time after that.

Unlike Staniel, there is a laundromat on Blackpoint. Of course, to call Rockpoint Laundry a laundromat is to call Walmart a store. Ida, the owner, has a half dozen or more new washers and dryers. She will also serve you a plate of six freshly made conch fritters for a dollar. For $10.00

Ida's waterfront Laundry in Blackpoint Settlement

($15.00 for women), she will cut your hair, right out on the deck, where people sit and use her wi-fi. She has postcards, hardware, and craft items for sale by the register. This is the only place we've found tonic water. You can take an 8-minute shower for $4.00 here. She has a few seaside cottages for rent.

George W. Bush, the axe-murderer of the English language, once said, "The problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur." Ida is the entrepreneur's entrepreneur. And, obviously, she knows exactly what cruisers are looking for after having spent a couple of weeks poking around the wilderness in the northern Exumas. Laundry, shower, conch fritters, wi-fi, tonic water. What genius! She's even built a dinghy dock off the rocks in front of her seaside laundromat.

We bring in a large load of laundry. We buy two $3.50 tokens, one for the washer one from the dryer, from an American behind the counter. She is a cruiser from Martha's Vineyard. She's here for the first time, doing her wash. Roxanne had to go to a meeting and having just met, left her in charge. What more can you say about a friendly culture whose two most common words, spoken together, are "no" and "problem."

Happy Hour at Scorpios

Picking up on her entrepreneurial ways, Scorpio's, the bar across the street, advertises a two-for-one drink special for cruisers' happy hour. Ten of us meet there at 4 pm.

To the waitress: "We're here to order drinks."
"No problem. I'll send over the bartender."
"Can we order appetizers?"
"No problem."

The two-for-one rum punch specials were alluringly deadly. We stayed for dinner. No problem. The commander had fried grouper. I had an amazing Caribbean barbecue sparerib dinner. The ribs were tender and coated with a spicy sauce with echoes of coconut. It came with peas and rice, potato salad, macaroni casserole. Bill for our dinners was $24.00, including the 15% gratuity customarily added by Bahamian restaurants.

It was 7 pm when we left Scorpios. The moon is in the last quarter and not up until midnight. It was dark. Luna was unlighted, out there in the harbor somewhere. We have a solar light that for some reason I put on the dinghy. I should have left it on the sailboat.

We had a tense ride. The large schooner we had seen between us and the shore apparently had moved further out.
The dinghy dock behind us was dark. I lost our landmarks. We passed a few unlit sailboats, but none we recognized. We headed for the larger mass of anchor lights toward our friends. We came upon Amarone II. Bruce and Claude has just gotten back.

They had passed Luna on the way, and Bruce pointed out the direction. Claude gave us a flashlight. We started back just as Jacques was tying his dinghy to Millevasions. He, too, had passed Luna. He motored along side us and shepherded us back home. Luna, Millevasions, and Amarone II are in a line. Nice to have buddy boats. The commander said, "I wasn't worried." No problem.

Blackpoint Settlement harbor