We Dun Reach

“We dun reach” is colloquial Bahamian for “we have arrived”. Besides the obvious definition of reaching a destination, it also reflects how the seafaring nature of this country is found in common speech. In sailing, the ideal point of sail is a reach where the wind is coming over the side of a boat.  In the Bahamas, as boats sailed north and south along the chains of islands, captains waited until the wind came perpendicular to their crafts to head or reach to another port.  When wind direction is central to your life, it is reflected in speech. 

How does this apply to us?  We have survived multiple days of high winds and squalls in GeorgeTown and now await good conditions to head further south.   

The oceanside beach at Stocking Island with storm waves still pounding the shoreline.

Meanwhile, the pace after regatta has slowed a bit.  We enjoy afternoons on the beach with volleyball

The not so professional volleyball players

And the peanut gallery

and walking through this typical Bahamian settlement. 

Charming St. Andrew's Anglican Church along the shore of Lake Victoria in George Town

Once the wind settles to a comfortable angle, we head down to Long Island and spend a night in Thompson Bay.  We are in the company of our friends Laura and Chris on Temerity. 

The next morning the alarms goes off at 3:30 am, and we head towards the Comer Channel to catch high tide with a full moon illuminating the way.  

The full moon lights our course - the small light to the right is Temerity's navigation light.

The Comer is a twelve mile stretch of deeper water between very shallow sand bars, all on the Great Bahamas Bank.  As dawn comes, we see no land in sight and have our eyes glued to the course line on our chartplotter.  There are no navigation buoys to keep us from going aground.  Temerity leads the way as she has a foot less draft. With the full moon high tide we see nothing less than 8 feet of water, but we still breathe a sigh of relief when we get to the other side. “We dun reach” – we have arrived in the remote Jimentoes Cays, a string of small, uninhabited cays (with the exception of Ragged Islands that lays at the very southern end and has a population of 50 people) that stretch 70 miles south and end less than 100 miles from the northeast shore of Cuba. We spend our first night anchored off Water Cay in the company of several Bahamian fishing boats and a few cruisers, most of whom are heading north.  It is a starkly barren small island with a few sand beaches between the ironstone shore.  We poke around in the sand and find the beach combing is excellent with sea biscuits everywhere. 

Ankle deep in gin clear water looking for treasures

The next morning we sail about 50 miles further south,

Tom on the trimaran Tryad speeds by us.  Several years ago Burt got to skipper this boat in the GeorgeTown regatta and won a first place.

weaving between shallows denoted on our chartplotter, stopping at Buena Vista Cay and anchoring along a huge sandy crescent beach. 

Slabs of limestone litter this otherwise pristine beach

And to our surprise this supposedly uninhabited island does have one resident, a Bahamian that lays claim to the island via generational lands and remains there to solidify that claim.  We see signs of his cottage but nothing of him.  Meanwhile, in the anchorage we see the fishing vessel, Lady Marie, out of Spanish Wells, Eleuthera.   For years we have heard George call in to our weather guru to check on conditions in this remote area.  George, whose family dates back to the Eleutherian Adventures, a group of Puritan English Loyalists who emigrated to Eleuthera in the 1650’s, hails us on the vhf radio and invites us over to his boat along with Laura and Chris. We go aboard and sit around the galley table for a long chat.  We are curious about the fishing business, and he is enjoying having some company. We talk about Bahamian and US politics, Little League Baseball (he is an umpire), youth sports, and we pepper him with questions about his life on a fishing vessel.  His boat is about 50 feet long and tows one skiff which is used for hookah diving for lobster and grouper by his son and another man. The fishermen build “lobster condos” out of concrete block by the thousands in these shallow waters and once or twice a year dive down to collect the lobsters that inhabit the condos. While the skiff is at work during the day, George prepares and freezes the previous day’s catch. Self-sufficient boats like these head out to the Jimentoes and Great Bahama Banks for several months at a time, returning to Spanish Wells at the conclusion of the fishing season in the end of March. Their catch is sent all over the world, and we had heard earlier that 50% of the lobster sold at Red Lobster Restaurants comes out of Spanish Wells.

 

We are still about twenty miles from the south end of the Jimentoes, and there are several other interesting cays to explore on the way.  We listen to the morning weather forecast and make a hard decision.  We are slightly low on fuel, so sailing rather than motoring back to civilization is a necessity. The next two days will bring pleasant southeast winds and then an undetermined period of strong north winds will set in which will make our timetable to return to the States difficult.  Sadly, we say good-bye to George on Lady Marie and to our good sailing companions during the past six months, Chris and Laura, who plan to continue on to the Caribbean.  And this is an unfortunate part of our nomadic life – we make wonderful friends who “fit like a glove” only to say goodbye as our paths diverge, leaving us hoping to someday reconnect. It is not unusual for tears to be involved.

We have a glorious sail back to Water Cay where we take a hike across the island to a windward beach.  The hike turns out to be another Bataan Death March as the trail disappears into dense brush, and we bushwhack our way through thorns and cactus to a pretty beach. 

A panorama of Water Cay with the central salt ponds we had to skirt on our way to the beach.

The hard to reach eastside beach at Water Cay.

We have the cuts and scratches to prove it! Rather than risk the return through the bush, we climb along the treacherous ironstone shore, returning to the dinghy just before sunset, exhausted and bloodied. After the fact, we realize how foolish the adventure was.  We are in the middle of nowhere; if someone got hurt there is no hope of assistance or rescue. 

Sunset at Water Cay once we are safely aboard Exuberaant

The next day we have another delightful sail back into Thompson Bay, Long Island where we securely anchor for the upcoming blow.

Long Island is long (about 80 miles) and sparsely populated by a mixture of natives and ex-pats. It offers another example of Bahamian colloquial speech. If you head south along the island, you are going “up-island”; if you head north you are going “down-island”.  It seems counter-intuitive, until you realize “up” is where the sun first rises and “down” is where the sun sets - Long Island runs basically northwest to southeast. So we head up and down island in the back of a pickup truck borrowed by some ex-sailing friends, Al and Sue, who now rent a cottage on Long Island six months a year. The transportation certainly doesn’t meet US safety standards, but it takes us on explorations of several caves on the island. The first cave overlooks our anchorage and is on private property where we receive permission to enter. 

Al leads us into the cave - tree roots in the distances come through one of the skylights.

Skylights, or holes in the ceiling, provide illumination as we look for the Lucayan Indian remains Al claims are found in the cave.  Yes, we finally stumble on a partially buried skeleton only to find it is plastic and placed there by some local youth as a gag.

The supposed human remains are in the center of the picture.

Further south (or up island) we stop at the ruins of St.Mary’s Church (circa 1500’s) which was built during the early years of the Spanish exploration of the Bahamas. 

The ceiling may be missing but the walls still stand at this 500 year old church

Behind the church is a trail taking us to a blue hole/cave. We are a good distance from the coast but the salt water is a crystal clear blue and supports a colony of vivid orange shrimp.  

One of many blue holes on the island

We finally arrive at the Hamilton Cave just outside of Clarencetown. Here we pay Mr. Cartwright for a guided tour of this extensive cave that lies on his family’s generational land. 

Mr. Cartwright leads us into the depths of the cave.

 

A skylight near the entrance

An hour and a half later, we know much more about the geology of these limestone islands.  We see stalagmites and stalactites of every conceivable shape and size.  

The formations appear to be columns holding up the roof

 

These stalagmites and and stalactites are coated in calcium deposits that come from the dripping ground water.

We see relics from the Lucayan times, and a plethora of animal life including bats, termites, cockroaches, and land crabs. 

The black lines etched into the rock are termite trails - tunnels made of organic materials that conceal the termites from the ever present bats.

 

Land crabs observe us beneath the sheltering rocks

It is interesting to learn Mr. Cartwright and his ancestors used these caves as refuge during hurricanes. Archeologists and geologists often come to Long Island to do research on this and other island caves.  Before we head out from Long Island, we jerry jug diesel to the boat, re-provision at an excellent, by Bahamian standards,  grocery store, enjoy the local Saturday Farmer’s Market, take a hike to the windward shore beach, 

The Atlantic beach near Thomspon Bay - notice the pink tinged sand.

and wile away a few hours in hammocks at a new beach bars along the shore.  

March has seen one strong northerly after another, not a good thing as you try to claw your way north.  We leave Thompson Bay to sail along the western coast, timing our departure to coincide with high tide at a shallow bottleneck.  We manage to get through the area by late afternoon and plan to anchor just north of there for the night, but wrap-around waves from the ocean make the anchorage untenable.  Our only alternative is to continue on to Cat Island in the dark.  It is a boisterous and uncomfortable motor sail into a stiff north breeze with short period ocean waves reaching over seven feet.  We arrive in the anchorage at New Bight, Cat Island shortly after midnight and easily fall asleep in the calm waters.  

The next morning we take our traditional hike up Mt. Alvernia, the highest point in the Bahamas, to the Hermitage, the self-built retirement home of the missionary/architect Father Jerome.  

The burned fields on the way to Mt; Alvernia.  Farmers burn off the scrub on an annual basis before planting the new spring crops.  We could smell the smoke miles away.  The little white dot atop the center hill is the hermitage.

 

The final ascent to the top with the Stations of the Cross carved into the local rock.

It is a special place of serene beauty and reflection. 

The beautiful scale model of a monastery, sized for just one person. The bay where we have anchored is in the background.

A carving at the entrance to the chapel.

That evening we head into the Fish Fry (a collection of shacks along the waterfront) for dinner at Hidden Treasures.  We enjoy the traditional Bahamian home cooking with the highlight being the most delicious tomatoes picked just hours earlier from the owner’s organic garden.  After dinner we move a shack or two down to see if Pompey and the Bo Hogs will be playing their traditional Rake and Scrape music. This group is internationally recognized as one of the last remaining bands of their kind.  Just the week before they were flown into Nassau to perform for Sidney Poitier’s (also originally from Cat Island) 90^th birthday and several years ago traveled to Paris for a UNESCO sponsored conference on indigenous music. Alas, there are only two boats in the harbor, not enough for a night of music.  Instead, our friends Ron and Dee on the other boat, Ursa Minor, have brought in a birthday cake to celebrate Cidell’s birthday. Cidell is one of the Bo Hogs but don’t ask what a Bo Hog is – we don’t have a clue.  A few other locals join in for cake and “Holy Water” brought in by “Father Jim”, or otherwise, gin brought in by Jim who has a great sense of humor.  It makes for an interesting evening in a location off the standard beaten cruiser path.

We would love to stay at Cat Island a few more days, but weather is dictating an early morning departure for Rock Sound, Eleuthera, 70 miles further north.  We have a pleasant motor-sail over smooth, crystal clear waters. Pleasant, that is, other than the encounters with ocean swells that penetrate between Cat and Eleuthera.  We top off our fuel needs at Cape Eleuthera Marina and head into the anchorage 

The anchorage at Rock Sound.  Our boat is in the far distance.

just in time for Happy Hour at Wild Orchid, an upscale restaurant along the waterfront. We stay in Rock Sound long enough to weather another bout of almost gale force winds and to get laundry done at a friendly and super clean laundromat. 

One house in town in ill-repair.  Rock Sound seems like a settlement on the skids. Abandoned houses that once were lovely line the streets.

A better maintained house along the waterfront

The forecast calls for several more days of strong winds which will continue to clock from east to north.  It doesn’t seem that bad in the anchorage, so we decide to head due north to Governor’s Harbor. Unfortunately, the wind continues to build, and we have a sleigh ride under dramatically reefed sails, seeing peak wind of 34 knots. On the plus side, we are hugging the shoreline so the waves never get over a couple of feet. Yup, we are clawing our way north and hope to be ready to cross into the Abacos once the winds subside and clock to the southeast in a few days.