February 2009

I stayed in Georgetown for ten days. I started to get into the spirit of this strange summer camp for retired people. I attended the Superbowl Party at St. Francis Marina, went to a seminar for boats heading south, and signed up for the race to Long Island on February 5th. The day before the race, I was down at Redshanks where I was aiming to explore a bat cave in the morning before heading to Kid Cove to repair Hanna Ho’s sail, then I was to have dinner aboard Argo 5 at Honeymoon Beach.

Things changed really fast one when I heard the morning net. Chris Parker had issued a new forecast with large seas for tomorrow. The race was suddenly moved up today. I frantically, made VHF calls to cancel my sail repair and dinner plans then fired up the engine. I had floated over a bar at high tide the night before to get into the anchorage. The tide was now low. All I could do was aim at the deepest point and hope. I gunned the engine as the keel began to drag and somehow plowed through. Originally, boats 35 feet and under were to start at 8:00 am, followed by boats five feet longer every ten minutes, then finally the multihulls at 8:40 am. The change of dates had been announced on the 8:10 am net. All bets were now off. Just get to the starting line as fast as you can and the committee boat will record your start time. The race was organized by Jan and Dave aboard Ziggy’s Dancer a C&C 30 from Toronto. Originally, we had planned to start at the same time so we could race boat for boat. My anchorage had put me much farther from the line than them and they weren’t waiting for me. Ironically, anchoring at Redshanks had put me past the starting line. I raced down the harbour at full throttle while boats that had already started whipped past in the other direction. I reached the correct side of the start line, spun her into the wind ran the main up, unfurled the genny and made my start.

The first part of the race was pretty anticlimactic after the frenzied rush to the starting line. The air was light and I ghosted down the harbour at about 4½ knots. Things started to heat up when the wind built as we exited the harbour. It was a very broad reach to the Hog Cay Way Point. The only way to sail quickly on such a broad point of sail without a spinnaker is to pole the genny out to windward and sail it by the lee. Unfortunately, the rules forbade the use of whisker poles. I tried the opposite. I hauled the main to windward with my preventer and sailed it by the lee. This still partially shadowed the genny and it collapsed frequently. The genny wouldn’t fly at all with the main to leeward. At Hog Cay, we hardened up to a beam reach and the wind built to 20 to 25 knots. I was sailing at a steady 7 knots with a quartering at 4 to 6 foot sea. If I caught a gust and a wave at the same time and bore off just as I felt the rudder loading, I would surf up to amazing speeds. The fastest speed I saw on the GPS was 9.8 knots! Boats that were not bearing off with the puffs were wiping out all over the place. I roared across the finish line into Thompson Bay, Long Island. The boat behind me broached as he was crossing the line and took out the dinghy that was acting as the pin end of the line.

Boats who chose to wait and sail on the original date were allowed to do so, so we had a long wait for the results. The crews of Windsong and Sea Star spent our first day at Long Island spelunking. There were two caves right in the town of Salt Pond that was just south of our anchorage. The first was located by the auto store. After getting directions, missing the trail, turning back, finding the trail, missing the turn off to the cave, and doubling back again we found ourselves at the opening to a 600 foot long tunnel with a ceiling about 20 feet high. About 200 feet in we were greeted by the warm earthy smell of guano and the excited chatter of bats. Little furry guys were plastered to the ceiling 20 feet above us. Cockroaches scurried through the guano at our feet. Alarmed by out flashlights, the bats began to circle around through the air. Deeper in we discovered that there was a second tunnel with four foot headroom running almost the entire length of the cave underneath the main tunnel. The lower tunnel also branched off forming at least one other broad low tunnel parallelling the first.

Dan and Kathy were all spelunked out and headed back to Sea Star for showers before the evenings race banquet. Windsong ain’t got no stinkin’ shower so I continued on to the second cave. The second cave was on private property and there was some confusion as to the correct etiquette for approaching it. There were signs on the road directing you down the driveway to the gate. On the gate was a no trespassing sign and a hand written sign saying beach access only for the cave. Further down the driveway were more signs directing you to the cave. I decided it meant that you were to follow the driveway to the beach and then to the cave. Later I learned that the owners preferred us to simply land our dinghies right on their beach and approach the cave from there.

I found myself following a short tunnel to a round, saucer shaped, open roofed chamber with lots of braided vines hanging down through the skylight. Another short tunnel lead to what really amounted to a large sinkhole with part of the owner’s deck built right into it. Along the roof of the tunnel were perfectly round holes created by ancient wave action. Each one was about a foot in diameter punching two or three feet up into the rock and plastered with dozens of squealing bats spreadeagled tightly against the stone.

I returned to the first chamber and worked my way along the back wall with my flashlight. I came to an opening about five feet high and five feet wide. As I peered in, it exhaled a warm moist breath heavy with bat guano. The beam of my powerful flashlight disappeared into the mist, never making it to the other side. What one earth had I found? As I crawled through, sweat began to trickle down my back as the opening bars of the Indiana Jones theme played in my head. The chamber started out about six feet high and 50 feet wide before rising to ten feet and sprawling out to 200 hundred feet wide. Stalactites and stalagmites were everywhere joined every so often in a beautiful column, some as thick as tree trunks, others as thin as ropes. A large land crab surprised me underfoot. About 400 feet in, the ceiling rose to 40 or 50 feet in an enormous underground cathedral. Hanging from the ceiling high overhead was another species of bat with large mousy ears in the classic, upside down, feet on the ceiling, wings wrapped around the body pose. I did my damnedest to photograph it, but it would have taken in entire National Geographic photography crew to light the place.

The first race banquet was a buffet held at Tryphena’s Club Tompson Bay. Tryphena served classic Bahamian fare: baked macaroni and cheese, peas and rice, potato salad, and lots of dead stuff for the meat eaters. The next day we had a second race banquet at the Island Breeze resort. If one race banquet is good, then two is even better! This banquet was a cruisers’ potluck and here the results were finally announced. Windsong beat Siggy’s Dancer by a whole 20 minutes but couldn’t make up her time on two of the slower boats, and couldn’t outreach a Nonsuch 30 finishing 4th out of about 40 boats. I did a little better at the bowline tying contest. Each table selected their fastest bowline and sent them to compete. We were each assigned a counter and given one minute to tie as many bowlines as be could. I tied at 12 with a Danish shipwright named Kim who was single handing aboard Gaia. The top five proceeded to round two: 40 seconds to tie bowlines blindfolded. Kim and I tied at 7. The tie breaker was behind the back. I tied six to his five in 40 seconds, making me the fastest bowline in Long Island! I was having quite a night. I even won the 50/50 draw!

Long Island is home to 40 communities, more than any other Bahamian Island. On February 7th, about half of the crews from the race got together for a bus tour to see some of these towns. We all climbed aboard the local school bus with the local Spanish teacher. Our first stop was the town of Mangrove Bush and the Long Island Museum. The museum itself is a replica of an old time plantation house and had many displays showing how people lived on Long Island until very recently. There was no electricity on the island before 1996! Next stop was the town of Hamilton where we had lunch and toured Hamilton’s Cave. We were given a guided tour of the cave by the owner, Leonard Cartwright. Leonard is an amateur archeologist and is currently working two dig sites in the cave where he finds lots of animal bones that show signs of butchering and cooking by the Lucayan Indians. The cave was far more extensive than either of the caves in Salt Pond but had no single room that was as big as that cavernous inner chamber of the last cave I visited. Once again, there were lots of bats, cockroaches, stalactites, and stalagmites. One interesting note was that the caves of the island have been mined for guano which is used for fertilizer. Two feet of guano was dug from the floor of Hamilton’s Cave.

From there, the bus went virtually off road as we trundled our way over an extremely narrow and rough gravel and stone road to Dean’s Blue Hole. At times trees were brushing the bus on both sides. Dean’s Blue Hole at 663 feet deep, is the deepest blue hole on earth and branching off of it is the world’s eighth largest underwater cavern. Recently, a new word record for free diving was set here. Unfortunately for us, the wind was bringing in lots of seaweed clogging up the blue hole and destroying the visibility. Only two people ventured in and reported 10 foot visibility.

Next was Clarence Town famed for its two Father Jerome churches. Jerome Hawes, an Anglican missionary and architect, designed and built St. Paul’s Church. Later, he converted to Catholicism and returned to Long Island as Father Jerome. He then built St. Peter’s church in an effort to outdo his earlier creation. St. Peter’s was the church chosen for us to tour. Father Jerome’s ability as an architect was evident. The church was constructed of blocks of local limestone creating a long roman arch on the inside and a pitched roof on the outside. In places the walls were three feet thick. There was no place in town I would rather be during a hurricane! We were treated to something that liability never would have allowed in Canada or the United States: we were allowed to climb the rickety ladders up into the twin bell towers. The towers were so narrow that some of the larger men couldn’t fit! The view was well worth all of the climbing and squirming through narrow hatchways.

On the way back to Salt Pond we stopped at Max, an open air bar in Deadman’s Cay. There was a guitarist playing who looked like a Beatle in skateboarder clothes. He played mainly 70's folk rock, and true to his appearance, some of the best Beatles covers I have ever heard.

That evening I had the privilege of dining aboard Siggy’s Dancer. Not only did Jan and Dave have great taste in boats, (she is a C&C 30 like Windsong) they are also vegetarians. Way more so in fact than me. They are raw food vegans and as such Siggy’s cabin was laid out with dozens of home made racks turning her into a floating sprout farm. Dinner was one of the most creative vegetarians meals that I have ever eaten. I must to confess that I don’t know what half of it was. We spent the evening watching a film about the Bluenose and comparing notes on how we have customized our boats. They have their cat aboard as well and gave me a great idea for a new place to put Spot’s kitty litter.

With 40 towns, there was still a lot of Long Island to see, so I rented a car along with Dan and Kathy from Sea Star. Since the bus tour went south we decided to head north. This was the first time I had ever driven on the left hand side of the road. Dan had to continually remind me to stay left. The worst part was cornering to the left in our American left hand drive rental car. With the driver riding along the shoulder of the road, the bushes blocked all view of the road ahead! Some businesses had mirrors across the road from their driveways so that you could see to safely turn left. We stopped for lunch at Sea Star’s namesake resort Stella Maris. After lunch we visited their cave. This was the most civilized cave we had seen on Long Island. The resort uses it for weekly parties, so it is outfitted with electricity and a bar! That didn’t keep the bats away, and I took some of my best bat pictures there.

Then it was off road to the ruins of Adderley’s Plantation. Abraham Adderley like many southern loyalists fled to Florida to escape the American Revolution where one man’s loyalist was another man’s traitor. Florida was not involved with the revolution, but on January 20, 1783, the Treaty of Versailles restored the Bahamas to England and gave Florida to Spain. Like so many others, Abraham was now forced to leave Florida and chose the Bahamas as his refuge. In 1790, he established a 700 acre plantation on Long Island to grow cotton, cattle, sheep and horses. His son William was born on the island and, in 1820, he expanded the plantation to 2,500 acres. The prosperity did not last long. Soil depletion and infestation of the cotton crops by chenille caterpillars put William in dire financial straights. Local folklore has it that he slit is own throat in 1888 on the plantation’s dock either due to a love triangle or his monetary woes. Legend states that the blood is still visible on the ruins of the dock at low tide. I searched the dock thoroughly but couldn’t find any 120 year old blood stains! William’s master herder Uriah Knowles took over the plantation and maintained it until his death in the early 20th century. After Uriah’s death the plantation ceased to operate and the buildings were destroyed by a hurricane in 1927. Even today, the extensive ruins clearly show what an impressive operation the plantation once was.

We thought the road to the Adderley Plantation was rough until we turned off for the Columbus Monument on Cape Santa Maria. The road was so freshly bulldozed that we found the bulldozer still in place. I gingerly manoeuvered through 10 inch boulders at about 10 km/hr and succeeded in only bottoming out the car twice. At one point the road tilted to 30 degrees and the rocks were all blackened by tires skidding as cars tried to slide off of the road into a deep gully. The road ended in a stairway that took us to a classic Bahamian aid to navigation: the light was hanging upside down by its wiring from a pole topped with an osprey nest! Beyond that was the monument to Columbus and a breathtaking view. Local literature has this Cape as the location where Columbus grounded his flagship, the Santa Maria. It was easy to imagine with the reef extending far, far out from the point. And what an unforgiving coast to be shipwrecked on! Back at the boats we pulled out Dan’s copy of The Log of Christopher Columbus only to discover that Columbus only visited the southern end of Long Island (which he named Fernandina) and he wrecked the Santa Maria in Haiti! Historians and tourism bureaus don’t always agree!

After nine days in Long Island, I departed for the Jumentos, or Ragged Islands. Windsong motored downwind through extremely light air to Flamingo Cay where I met up with many of the boats that had been in the Long Island race or that I had met earlier in the Exumas. I didn’t see much of Flamingo on my fist visit, because in the morning conditions could not have been better for sailing on to Buenavista Cay. I sailed right off of my anchor and roared along on a 6 knot close reach over the incandescent green Great Bahama Banks. I was reading Hal Roth’s Two Against Cape Horn. It made me think of Irving Johnson who filmed the four masted bark Peking rounding Cape Horn in a storm. I watched Windsong racing along through these emerald green waves and wondered how Irving Johnson would have filmed this. I picked up my camera and tried to find out for myself. If you have not watched any of my videos so far, this one you have to see!

We spent three days at Beunavista beach combing for sea beans that float in from the amazon, snorkelling, and having a bonfire on the beach. I got to know Carol and Dave aboard Passport out of Charlevoix, Michigan and Bill and Barb from Suncast out of Toronto. Both couples began their cruising carriers in the North Channel of Georgian Bay. Beunavista was also where I made my conch shell horn.

On our third day, we heard a fisherman calling repeatedly for a radio check. Dan aboard Sea Star answered him. He spoke very deep, meaning his Bahamian accent was so thick we had a hard time understanding him. Eventually, we gathered that he had spun his prop and needed a socket and handle to change it. Dan radioed me and asked if I was interested in joining him on the rescue mission. Dan picked me up and we returned to Sea Star to try to find the appropriate tools. Who should appear, but the fisherman aboard another open fishing skiff. Some other fishermen had found him. They didn’t have the tools either, but offered him a ride in to get the tools from us. We handed him Dan’s entire bag of sockets. Twenty minutes later we got another hail. The other fisherman dropped him off at his boat and left without waiting for him to make his repair. None of the sockets fit. Kathy found one more socket and we stopped by Passport to get another. Soon we were bashing through three foot waves of the open ocean in Sea Star’s dinghy. We found the 20 foot open boat anchored in 50 feet of water on the ocean side of Doublebreasted Cay. Fortunately, the socket Kathy found fit, and he was able to change out the prop. If we hadn’t helped him he would have had a really miserable night out there. If his anchor let go (and it was amazing that it was holding) he would have drifted to Cuba. At least he had lots of conch onboard for food!

It was a nice beam reach to Racoon Cay. I went for a walk and found some old loyalist ruins, one of which used conch shells as part of the building material. I saw the old salt pond with all of its sluice channels for flooding in the sea water. I also met the local inhabitants: goats!

Next stop was Hog Cay our nearest possible approach to the only inhabited island in the chain Ragged Island itself, home to Duncan town. Hog Cay was absolutely crawling with goats and featured a unique location for sundowners. The Hog Cay Yacht Club was a few driftwood planks over crates that had washed up on the beach. Behind these makeshift benches was a tree draped with a fishing net and various fishing floats that had been gathered from the beach. Here I met Murray and Heather aboard Windswept IV. I should say, was reacquainted with Murray and Heather, because they ran the marina at the Killarney Mountain lodge for several years. Murray assisted me in fuelling up Windsong there years ago!

The following day we dinghied into Duncan Town. The waters surrounding the town are extremely shallow and the only way in is down a mile long channel through the mangroves. It felt like a scene out of Apocalypse Now as the dinghies planed through the narrow gap in the trees. The town itself seemed somewhat post-apocalyptic. Duncan Town once had a population of 500 and a thriving industry exporting salt to Cuba. When Castro came into power he put an end to that practice. Now only 80 people hang on, living off of the sea conching and fishing. There were many abandoned homes due to the huge decline in population. The houses that were occupied were not in much better shape than the abandoned ones with faded paint and missing shingles, and surrounded by empty barrels and lines of drying conch. Chickens, goats, pigs, dogs and peacocks roamed the streets. Happy looking fisherman, including the guy Dan and I rescued reclined in hammocks made from fish nets suspended from trees and porches. You couldn’t help but feel that you had sailed to end of the earth. And here, under such gruelling conditions, we met some of the friendlies people in the Bahamas. There was a large police station and since there was no crime the building was used as a warehouse. The only guy in town who seemed to be doing well financially, was Captain Moxy, the retired mailboat captain. His house and the apartment building he owned looked like they belonged more in a Florida suburb, than in that subsistence living village.

The town was bustling because we had arrived on mailboat day. For 30 years they have been lobbing to have a deeper, wider channel dredged to the town so that the mailboat could get in. Nothing has happened so the mailboat is forced to anchor off and send all of the town’s supplies in by tender. The locals arrive at the dock, unload the tender into waiting pickups and send it back out for another load.

We found Sheila’s Fisherman’s Lounge for lunch. We asked Sheila if the large population of goats in town were a communal resource or if people were able to keep track of their own personal animals.

"No," Sheila replied, "Dey all belong to da same guy, and we wish he would get dem atta here!"

After lunch we visited the local school. We had two retired teachers (and one who wishes he was retired) in the crowd, and we heard that we could get internet access there. The one room school house was run by a husband and wife teaching team from Guiana. They had a total of 11 students covering grades 1 through 9. They were very impressed with the importance the parents place on education.

On February 21, we decided that it was time to start heading back north. Sea Star, Passport, and Windsong were now the only boats left from the group that had headed to the Jumentos after the Long Island race, we were low on supplies, and nothing had been available in Duncan Town. It was another perfect day for sailing and I sailed right off of my anchor and all the way to Buena Vista Cay. I went ashore in search of the ruins of a Loyalist house that was shown on the chart. I tore my shirt on a branch as I bush wacked my way there but I did eventually find it, and its unusual inhabitant. Standing in one section of the open foundation was a goat and at his feet were the bones of one of his less fortunate buddies! On my way back to Windsong, Dan and Kathy flagged me down in my dinghy and invited me aboard Sea Star for dinner. I went aboard for another one of Kathy’s fantastic meals wearing the remaining half of my shirt. We are all cruisers here. Nobody cares!

When I got back to Windsong, Spot did not greet me in the cockpit as the dinghy touched down. This was unusual, but sometimes she just can’t tear herself away from her nap to come see me. I was a couple of hours late for feeding time and it was really odd that she didn’t mob me when I entered the cabin. I filled her bowl and she did not appear. Now this was really weird! I started checking all of her favourite places. Spot was nowhere to be found. The wind was blowing about 15 knots off of the shore and it was pitch black. My heart rose into my throat as I thought about my poor cat in the water drifting off onto the banks to drown. I contemplated making a call on the VHF to organize a search party. One couple had successfully recovered a loose dinghy that way. There was absolutely no way that we were going to be able to find something as small as a cat they may have been in the water for hours by now. I began to panic. How in the hell could a cat with 5000 sea miles under her paws do something so lubberly as to fall overboard at anchor? What could I possibly do to try to save my furry little buddy who sailed all of those miles with me? A hopeless search party seemed necessary, at least for catharsis. But, before disturbing the whole anchorage, I decided to do a thorough search of my own. I searched the decks and surrounding waters with a flashlight then headed below. I started in the V birth and worked my way aft going into every locker whether or not it was physically possible for a cat to get into it. When I reached the cockpit I pulled open the starboard side cockpit locker to find Spot looking up at me as if to say, "Hi, do you like my new private cabin?". Spot never got such a big bear hug!

We had a nice reach north to Flamingo key sailing anchor to anchor. After how crowded it was on our last time through, we were shocked to find the place empty. The three boats sailed right into Two Palms Anchorage and dropped our hooks. Another cold front was on its way in so we had to hole down for five days. We snorkelled, explored the dinghy-in cave, and walked the trails. The front hit hard and this one didn’t just blow, it rained and poured for the first time in almost two months. Windsong’s deck and fittings sighed almost audibly as the thick crust of salt washed away. As the wind shifted north, Passport swung too close to the rocks and was forced to move to the other anchorage. This soon became a source of amusement when the DEA came to visit. I was aboard Sea Star at the time. A black chopper with US registration numbers and no other markings flew in over the island and circled Windsong and Sea Star twice. Not noticing my long hair, they decided that we were not the evil doers, and flew off to visit Passport in the next bay. They circled Passport a few times then slowly dropped below the point. We were left wondering but Passport had a front row seat. The chopper landed on the beach and the crew emerged wearing flight suits, helmets, and Uzis. They proceeded down the trail to the back entrance to the dinghy-in cave. Finding only conch shells, no drugs, and no WMDs, they decided that the world was safe for another day, boarded their chopper and flew away. Dan keyed the mike on the VHF and began teasing Passport about the suspicious activities that they had been up to, knowing full well that the DEA was listening to the whole conversation.

When the front finally passed through, I was hoping to head to Georgetown to replenish my almost exhausted supplies. I would have been down to hardtack and ship’s biscuit if I had any on board. Things were so desperate that I had even run out of coffee. Aeolus had no mercy on me and the wind died down but stayed stubbornly from the north. It would have been a horrible slog, motor sailing straight into the wind. Sea Star and Passport both had guests flying in to Staniel Cay, and were therefore planning to take the old mailboat route across the banks on a close reach. That sounded much more appealing so I joined them. Sailing from anchor to anchor, we took refuge for the night in an anchorage on the banks off of tiny little Rocky Point.

The morning brought light airs, but soon we were reaching along nicely. We arrived in Black Point in with plenty of time to fill Windsong’s thirsty water tanks and bare larder. The three crews assembled for dinner at the famous Lorraine’s café to revel in the memory of our voyage off of the beaten track, and to look forward to the next chapter in our journey.