The Three C’s and Eleuthera

Our wicked winter weather is calming down, so it is time to move on from our protection in George Town to areas a bit more remote. With virtually no wind, we motorsail about thirty miles east to Calabash Bay on the northern tip of Long Island.  The water is so flat and clear that we can see the bottom in over 60 feet of water. Calabash Bay is the home to Cape Santa Maria Resort, an upscale out-island resort that is cruiser friendly.  After exploring the bay by dinghy and walking along the crescent sand beach and extended sand bores, we head in to the resort for dinner.   

The endless beach at Cape Santa Maria

It is Burt’s birthday, and this is an ideal place to celebrate with drinks and dinner in the screened in two story bar area.   

Burt celebrates an important birthday with a rum punch at the resort

As often happens in situations like this, we become the tourist attraction as resort guests grill us on the experiences we have as live-aboard sailors.  It is hard to think of our life as that unusual, but to those who venture into the tropics for a short duration vacation, we must seem pretty exotic.

The next day we have a similar motorsail further east to Conception Island, a deserted cay belonging to the Bahamian National Park system.  As remote and unprotected as it is, one usually sees only a handful of boats here.  But, this time the place is packed with 17 boats anchored off the western beach – obviously the weather has created some pent up demand.  Conception is one of the most beautiful places in the Bahamas with a spectacular crescent beach that descends through a myriad of aqua and blue colored waters to the nearby deep ocean.  The colors are indescribable. 

Wrap-around swells pound the beach at our anchorage.

We hike over to the ocean side beach with its pink sand

We walk the beach; we dinghy along the beach - we can’t get enough of the shoreline. 

Just a part of my collection from beach combing, but you can only take pictures. Since this is a national park you are not allowed to remove anything from the island or sea floor.

One morning at high tide we dinghy into a series of mangrove creeks that are a nursery for turtles and sharks.

The mangrove creeks only accessible at high tide.

They all must be sleeping as all we see is one very shy turtle. 

One very scared turtle

Another afternoon we snorkel the reef to the north of the beach.  It is decent snorkeling but supposedly the best reefs are just a bit further north.  I’m not too interested as this is also the area where scuba charters chum for their well know shark dives, a practice that we think should be outlawed.

A spectacular sunset at Conception - yes we saw a green flash but it didn't show up in the picture.

With the potential for some stronger weather we need to leave Conception and begin working our way further north in case we need to find a more sheltered harbor.  Our journey takes us next to New Bight on Cat Island.  When in New Bight, a hike up to the Hermitage is mandatory.  We walk and bike through the scrub, which is being turned into small farm fields, to Mount Alverna, the highest point in the Bahamas.   

A pepper plant attempts to make a go of it in the very rocky soil.

Atop it, the Hermitage is a jewel, a miniature Italianate monastery perfectly sized for one man, Father Jerome, the architect/priest who built so many of the Catholic Churches in the out islands. 

It is a steep climb up to the Hermitage, passing along the way the Stations of the Cross carved by Father Jerome in the native rock.

Another view of the Hermitage with the bay in the background.

That evening we head down to the Fish Fry, a collection of shacks on the water front, common in many small settlements. 

The Fish Fry before things get lively.

Here we first greet Pompey, the leader of the Rack and Scrape Band we heard last year.  He remembers us from a year ago and warmly welcomes us to Cat Island. These settlements get so few visitors that such recognition is not all that unusual.  Sadly, the band will not be playing this day.  Two shacks down we join a table of cruisers at the Hidden Delights restaurant. The owner prides herself with innovative cooking (for Bahamian standards) and home grown organic produce.  We ask her how the garden is going this year and she laments that goats have just eaten her prized imported carrot plants.  Burt asks why there isn’t goat (known as mutton in the Bahamas) on the menu, and she breaks into a smile. Nevertheless, we have an outstanding meal – my chicken was marinated in a ginger lime sauce – pretty gourmet for a shack on the beach. 

The beach at Hidden Treasures at sunset.

And across the street is the beginnings of a Bahamian C-Class sloop.  Mark Knowles, from Long Island, has come to Cat to work with younger people, teaching them boat building skill.  Without the efforts of people like him, traditional Bahamian boat building may become a lost skill.

The next day we hop a few more miles north to Fernandez Bay, home to the Fernandez Bay Resort, another small resort that is friendly to cruisers.  We delight in another sandy crescent beach – another day of walking the shore, wading the sand bars, and riding in the dinghy to search for elusive sea turtles. That night we indulge in dinner at the resort that starts with happy hour on the patio with live guitar music and eventually adjourns to a candlelight dinner in the open air dining room.  Last year we joined our friends on Salty Paws who were providing the music that night, and they introduced us to their friends who were resort guests.  Happily, this year the same couples were there, and we enjoyed dessert with them, catching up on a year’s worth of news and again finding ourselves peppered with questions about our unusual lifestyle.

While at Fernandez a mild west wind comes up and we have an uncomfortable night in this exposed anchorage. At first light we head up to Eleuthera and a more protected anchorage.  Typically boats split this trip up into two parts, anchoring one night at Little San Salvador Island, a cruise ship port known as Half Moon Bay, but the winds will make the anchorage miserable. So, we motorsail the entire 70 mile passage, stopping at Cape Eleuthera Marina for a quick refueling, and then heading into Rock Sound.  Along the way, we see a band of dark clouds stretching from west to east in an otherwise clear sky.  Along this band, waterspouts are forming due to the temperature differential between the unusually warm water and the cold cloud tops.  At one point we see four waterspouts simultaneously, but we are able to pass safely beneath the cloud. Also, along the way, we hear an announcement for a cruisers’ happy hour at the newly re-opened Wild Orchid Restaurant in Rock Sound.  We’ll be late arriving, but with showers taken along the way, we are ready to launch the dinghy and head in to reunite with many of the friends we made in George Town. We assume our friends on Egret are at the happy hour since there is no dinghy on their boat, but when we get in we discover they are not there.  The next day we drop by to see them and find their dinghy is self-destructing and in the process of being repaired by a local.  We provide shuttle service in to shore for groceries and a bit of exercise – being without a dinghy is a real inconvenience as it leaves you stranded on your boat.  Several days later, the dinghy is returned and remains inflated for a couple of hours before they capitulate to the inevitable and begin the search for a new dinghy.  Many phone calls later, they have purchased a dinghy in the United States and arranged for delivery to Marsh Harbor in the Abacos on April 8.  Meanwhile, they are marooned on their boat unless someone is around to give them a ride.

One pretty cottage along the shore in Rock Sound.  Note the pineapple motif in the fence gate - pineapple farms were plentiful at one time on Eleuthera but with advent of corporate farms in Hawaii, the Eleutheran stock was transported to Hawaii.

One evening at the Wild Orchid, we meet several administrators from a school and research station called the Island Institute.  Besides providing research facilities for various universities, they also host a “semester abroad” program for high school students, a number of which come from several prestigious private schools in the Cleveland, Ohio area.  The students complete a normal high school semester while also assisting in some of the research programs and acquainting themselves with this unique marine environment.  While chatting with these people, we asked about a recent tragic event that occurred just off their facilities.  Apparently, a 30-some year old male was kiteboarding off the coast while his girl friend was observing from their anchored sailboat.  At one point he took a sudden crash.  His girl friend immediately went to assist with the dinghy but found him bleeding profusely.  He was able to indicate that he had been hit by a sting ray.  She called for help on the radio and took him back to the sailboat where they were met by the staff from the Island Institute who transported him to an awaiting ambulance. The staff described his wounds as far more than just a slash of a sting ray. Rather he was missing most of his calf, and they surmised that he was originally slashed by a jumping sting ray but the blood in the water attracted sharks and the rest is history.  Sadly, he bled out before reaching medical help.  It is stories such as this that stoke my deep fear of sharks.

A front is coming through so we re-anchor on the west side of Rock Sound to get better protection.  For most of the night we see continuous lightning in all directions but for some reason it is never overhead.  We wake up the next day to strong NW winds and hunker down. The following day conditions improve enough for us to motor sail into 20 knot winds up to a favorite stop, Governor’s Harbor.  

A view of our anchorage at governor's Harbor

This town was the first capital of the Bahamas and the older buildings reflect the British colonial style of architecture.   

Building along the waterfront reflect their colonial heritage.

And this plaque on Cupid's Cay further demonstrates the historical importance of this town.

Once the original settlement of the Eleuthern Adventurers, a group similar to the pilgrims who came to the Bahamas in the 1640’s, it is now a lively town combining more cosmopolitan Bahamians with winter residents and tourists.  We enjoying strolling past the many colorful cottages and government buildings, and end up dining at the newly opened and elegant French Leave Resort which overlooks the town and our anchorage. We really feel like we have returned to civilization.

The attractive entrance to French Leave Resort, made of local stone and driftwood.

 

The following day, we sail and eventually motorsail in dying wind through the narrow Current Cut (shallow and very strong tidal currents) to Meeks Patch, just outside the town of Spanish Wells at the northern most point of Eleuthera.  Spanish Wells is an unusual place by Bahamian standards.  It is almost completely white, populated by descendents of the Eleutheran Adventurers, it is a working city, not a tourist destination, and it is home to the largest fishing fleet in the Bahamas. We arrive there on March 31, the last day of lobster season, and a parade of large fishing boats with their attendant pangas is passing our anchorage on their way home to Spanish Wells.   

One of many fishing boat which pass our anchorage on their way back to Spanish Wells.

These boats go out for months at a time to the waters between the southern Bahamas and Cuba which are very fertile lobstering grounds, so fertile that this fleet provides over 50% of the lobster to the Red Lobster restaurant chain.  We watch with fascination as one boat is off loading cylindrical bags of poached and frozen lobster tails.   

Unloading many crates of lobster tails processed for export.

After some time with their families, these boats will return to the fishing grounds to build “lobster apartments” on the shallow banks – structures of concrete blocks and tin which provide the lobsters with nice hideouts for the summer months before harvesting begins again.  In the fall, the pangas will branch out from the mother ship with the fisherman who free dive the apartments to harvest the lobster, taking them back to the mother ship for processing.  It is a profitable business as evidenced by the well maintained homes and boats of Spanish Wells.  We take our bikes ashore and explore Spanish Wells and neighboring Russell Island which is connected by a rickety one lane bridge.  While Spanish Wells consists of orderly, parallel, numbered streets with homes on small lots, 

One of the attractive homes in Spanish Wells - we love the lavender paint job with the beautiful bougainvillea. 

A view from the east facing beach of Spanish Wells - note the pink sand.

Russell Island has fewer but larger homes and some actual farms where we see oranges, mangos, and bananas growing in patches fenced for goats to graze.  

As we go further north, we see more agriculture and lusher vegetation.

There is actually soil here, something we haven’t seen in the rest of the Bahamas.

While we enjoy our stay in Spanish Wells, again helping our friends on Egret with shuttle service to the island, we see a nice opportunity to sail north through ocean waters to the Abacos.  We have around 15 knots of wind on the beam so it should be delightful, but as the wind begins to die the ocean swells, which are higher than predicted, give the boat an uncomfortable roll.  We eventually put on the motor and head into the Sea of Abaco, our last destination before heading back to the United States, as fast as possible, arriving with headaches and queasy stomachs.