sailing

The farther we go, the less internet we have… for the past 10 days now we have been in the outer islands at the bottom of the Exumas chain, close to truly remote areas.  We are not at the ‘back of beyond’…. but we are close to it!

I’ve always felt that it verged on incredible that Columbus first landed on these tiny islands in the midst of vast reefs of coral after sailing so far.  On the day we sailed here to Rum Cay, we couldn’t spot this island at 20 miles….or 16 miles… I was getting worried that our next stop would be Africa.  Of course, this was an illogical fear since we have two forms of GPS on board giving quite an accurate position of our location.  Still, I wanted visual confirmation.  On a clear day with nothing but ocean in all directions, I thought we should see Rum Cay far sooner than we did.

Columbus named this island Santa Maria de la Concepcion, when he landed here on his second voyage to the New World.  Then at some point the named got changed to Rum Cay, supposedly because of a cache of rum that floated ashore from a nearby shipwreck.

On the way to Rum Cay we stopped at the northwestern side of Long Island, at Calabash Bay.  Aside from walking the amazingly creamy, soft beaches there (and collecting more beautiful shells) we did not explore Long Island.  We are saving that for when we begin our journey north.  When we left to sail east, we passed the northern tip of Long Island, which is also the highest elevation of that island where there is a monument to Columbus and to the Lucaya native people.

We sailed east to the tiny island of Concepcion that sits out in the Atlantic. Ocean.  Concepcion is an uninhabited island, now designated a wildlife preserve, so it is pristine and teeming with life in the coral reefs.  While we set our anchor in the crystal waters, where the visibility was truly about 100 feet, a large puffer fish came right up to the stern of our boat.  Either these fish are extremely used to people and know they cannot be hunted, and/or they know that boats often offer tasty treats, like bits of unwanted vegetables. This fish was quite happy to get some lettuce and broccoli cuttings. Rays and turtles also swam by the boat.  The beaches were full of exquisite shells.  Bob snorkeled on the reefs with friends, while I sat in the dinghy talking to others who sat in their dinghies along the reefs, looking at the fish through our ‘look buckets.’  I saw so many tropical fish in these reefs, and so many interesting types of reef life… sea fans, anemones, sea cucumbers…. Other things that I have never seen before so I cannot name them!  I saw live brain coral which is even more fascinating than the bleached dead corals I have always thought is so beautiful.

And speaking of brain coral… the main reason I was interested in visiting Rum Cay, which is also sitting out in the Atlantic Ocean, far from what I would feel is the protected water of the Exuma chain,   there is a man who is simply known as Bobby, who does wonderful carvings on brain coral.  We saw quite a few examples of his work aboard Cat’s Meow whom we met at Concepcion.  The treasure trove of carvings that they bought from Bobby would sink our boat, but I came here hoping to find a little something to bring home to my garden terrace in Connecticut.  Well, either Cat’s Meow cleaned him out, or he has taken whatever was left to a gallery in Georgetown.  I’m a bit disappointed, but I have enjoyed looking at his large works that grace the grounds of Sumner Point Marina, where we are staying.

I love this one and wonder how much it weighs…. very tempting! If only you could see how much patterning there is in the coral!  Bobbly uses different grinders to create these wonderful pieces.

Rum Cay suffered some severe damage in hurricane Sandy a few months back.  The entrance to the very protected harbor was silted in, and is not yet fully opened again.  Getting here through the maze of coral reefs was quite challenging, and then when we finally got to the harbor entrance we’d been warned that unless it was full high tide most boats have to wait on a pier because there is still so much dredging to do!  Luckily, when we arrived two hours after high tide, there was a crew of other visitors ready to help us dredge our own path through the sandy bottom to the pier.  At full low tide we were really hard aground, with our bow completely out of the water and about 15” of our bottom paint visible along the whole side of the boat!  As the next tide rose, we were slamming down into the sand on our keel.  I’ve never felt anything like that before, and never thought we’d purposefully run ourselves this hard aground to visit a location.  But when the next tide came up the following morning, we were able to move into the little protected basin and get a deeper spot along the dock.  This marina is not yet open for business after the hurricane damage, so this year all dockage is free.  Repairs to this marina are somewhat on hold right now, and we have heard that ownership of the marina is in question.  Bobby is in residence here and might soon become the legal owner, but he has no real desire to run a marina.  At the moment the large restaurant is his gallery and he generously offers use of the restaurant’s kitchen to boaters who create large communal pot-luck dinners several nights a week.

The sailors who visit this island are as interesting as the people who live here.  This is a group of adventurers who strive to get as far from civilization as they can.  They want to be off the grid.  Most of them are headed further south to more remote destinations.  There are a group of young people on boats here that is refreshing since the majority of sailors here are all retirees, like Bob and me.  A group of young people goes out snorkeling and spear fishing every day, and when they return in the afternoons to clean their catch, hordes of nurse sharks, lemon sharks, and bull sharks come in to this tiny harbor for the trimmings.

This is some BIG lobster!

A beautiful golden spotted grouper!

One young couple will certainly be memorable to me for a very long time.  The young man is 25 and the young woman is 22.  Wow.  In real life they live in Alaska and work as crew on a salmon fishing boat out of Prince William Sound.  She runs the nets while he runs the small boat …not sure what it’s called.  Other than the two of them, the only other crew is the captain.  Tanya was born in Cypress to parents who were circumnavigating on their sailboat.  Her older sister was born in Panama.  Tanya’s family is from Norway, and sadly I didn’t get to ask Jumel (not even certain how he spells his name!) about his background.  They fish in Alaska from May to October, and take the rest of the year to sail together on their pretty sloop Rainbow Connection.

Rum Cay has a very small settlement.  We’ve heard that the mail boat comes once a week with provisions for the small general store (called the Last Chance Food Store), and that any fresh produce that arrives on that boat is gone within moments of arriving. I believe it… we took a look in that store that is about the size of a small backyard garden shed, and there was nothing but a few canned goods.  There is one restaurant that looks a bit questionable, and when Bob asked about getting something for lunch yesterday, the owner Ruby, said she hadn’t prepared anything.  (I have to admit that I was relieved).  She said she prefers people to give her at least one hour’s notice if they want lunch or dinner.    When you get your food, you take it outside to a little covered structure, open to the weather, with old picnic tables where you can sit and look out at the bay with its maze of coral reefs and varying shades of blue and green waters.  Rougher than any dining spot I’ve ever seen, but also with a view more beautiful than I could have ever imagined!

We walked a couple miles of this island, and what sights there were!  Beautiful little canals where salt water used to be captured in pools to dry for making salt…  a stunning little whitewashed church with a lovely garden…  the small, colorful, ramshackle houses of the inhabitants.  We saw a few men around, but mostly we saw lots of women sitting in the shade here and there, always in groups.  Most people here keep chickens and goats.  At one small house we saw a huge black Hummer II parked in front with two goats tied to the vehicle.  What a sight!

Five week old baby goat!

 

The pretty little Anglican church just beyond the center of town.

We plan to stay here until the strong winds blow through, which might take most of a week.  Our sage weather router in Florida says he believes this will be the last strong wind of the winter down here.  I sure hope so! And I can’t help thinking that in the next couple of weeks the snows at home will melt and the crocus will be popping up.  The days will get longer, and I would love to see spring arrive in New England….

 

 

 

Now Bob and I have moved on to Little Farmer’s Cay where the big festival and regatta have taken place over the last two days.  This is another side of island culture!  Bahamians from all over have arrived to participate in this festival, and they’ve all come by boat!  Even various government officials have come to this festival (probably by that little prop plane that I keep seeing), and it’s remarkable to see what pride they all take in their country and their culture.  I am in awe!  The mail boat arrived with four (not three!) Class C Bahamian sloops on board and many crates of food and drink for the festival, and lots of people. I learned that it left Wednesday night around 10pm, from Nassau, in order to arrive on Little Farmer’s Cay at 8am on Friday morning.  Since there are no sleeping accommodations on the mail boat everyone just stayed up and partied all night.  That’s why we saw passengers drinking beer on arrival first thing in the morning… they had not stopped all night!  And now I understand the blaring island music as well!

Others arrived by smaller powerboats.  I don’t know how other sloops arrived to make a total of nine boats to race in the 2-day regatta.  There were also souvenirs for sale, brought in by boat as well.

There was much pomp and circumstance, that somehow blended seamlessly with the most casual sense of getting anything done…. it’s hard to describe, but easy to enjoy! No one seemed particularly hurried or stressed in getting everything off the mail boat and down the road (which involved walking and driving on the runway for the little airstrip), but somehow everything was set up and ready to go by the time that first race of the regatta took place around noon.

This man is some sort of minister for the government.  I wish I’d paid more attention!

 

And the sailing regatta!  On the second day I had the camera, and I was so enthralled in the event that I took just under 400 photos!  There was only one race the first day because the winds got too fierce for even these hardened sailors to handle.  But Saturday there were three races, and Bob participated in all of them, on the sloop Thunderbird.  They did not end up winning a trophy, but it was obvious that every boat had moments of brilliant strategy and feats of daring!

This is one crazy sport!  The boats have only one huge sail, and to balance that canvas (and it literally is cotton canvas in an age when all other boats have moved on to Dacron or even more high tech synthetic materials)…  as said, to balance all that canvas there are removable planks that slide under the gunwale to extend well out over the water on the windward side of the boat (that is the opposite side to the sail).  The crew scramble out onto these planks, called ‘prides,’ in order to balance the weight of the boom and sail on the other side, which would capsize the boat if not for the crew hiking out on the prides.  When these boats come about on a different tack, which means bringing the boom and sail to other side of the boat, the crew scrambles down the pride back into the cockpit, yanks out the pride and shoves it into the gunwale on the other side.  Then they all scramble out onto it again.  There is plenty of risk of injury.  Just moving the pride from one side to the other offers lots of chance for getting hit by this big plank of oak, or getting fingers broken when maneuvering it.  The men all end up with lots of bruises from scrambling out on these things, and they call their injuries ‘boat bites.’

During these races there are plenty of mishaps.  While you are out on the pride you hold on by locking your legs under the pride, but there is very little to hold on to with your hands.  The guy farthest out has no handhold and must rely on his locked legs to keep him from falling in the water.  During the first race Bob was the farthest man out on the plank when the captain realized that Bob just didn’t weigh enough to be out there.  He told him to switch places, but no one was to move off the plank, so Bob had to climb over the other guys while under sail and hiked up high off the water.  I don’t know how he did it.  There were plenty of times on all the boats when someone almost fell off the pride into the water, but it didn’t happen.

Can you see Bob?  He’s third from the end in this photo.

There were lots of boat casualties, and I understand it’s quite common for at least one boat to sink in every race.  At this regatta two boats sank, one during the first race and one during the second.  After that, while there were plenty of boat mishaps, none of them sank again.  During that second race Thunderbird’s boom raked across the boom of Golden Girl and then caught Golden Girl’s forestay, which dragged it over far enough that Golden Girl went down and sank.  Someone on a powerboat nearby was enraged by this event and began ramming into Thunderbird.  Several times this powerboat actually rode up onto the deck of Thunderbird.  Bob said at one point he had to duck as the powerboat drove right up onto the deck of Thunderbird, with Bob crouching right below it in the cockpit.  There was no penalty for any of this… after a few minutes the guy in the powerboat took off and wasn’t seen again.

There were other wild moments during the races.  The start involves all the boats anchoring right along the starting line.  When the gun goes off they all pull up anchor while also raising sail.  The motion of pulling up the anchor gives a bit of a jump start to the sail filling with wind and the race is off and running.   At the first race on Friday, Thunderbird’s captain chose the spot right next to the starting buoy to anchor as a prime place for the starboard tack beginning leg.  Two other boats liked that idea and moved the buoy in order to anchor in this prime position.  There was no penalty for this!  Then a bit later, one of the boats went around the wrong side of one of the marks, and this too was not contested.  Rules seem a bit casual here, and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone.

The starting line… Thunderbird is at the far left.

Thunderbird (on right) crossing paths with Lady Eunice.  Bob is exchanging places on the pride with some of the other crew.

So, I’ll try to pick a few of the 400 photos.  While the boats were too far away on their course I got some shots of the locals.  Beautiful people!

We were thrilled to find that “Tall Boy” came all the way from Potter’s Cay in Nassau to make his famous conch salads at the festival!  This time I made sure to have one!

And this pretty much sums up how both Bob and I feel these days: