Warderick Wells to Norman’s Cay – 22 nautical miles sailed, 4 miles in dinghy, 2 kilometres walked, 200 metres snorkelled
The east winds have been blowing with incredible consistency for the past week or two, creating excellent sailing conditions for the protected Exuma banks. Our ride this morning took about 3.5 hours and was enjoyable but uneventful. Today's destination - Norman’s Cay - is a very popular anchorage with a rich and sorted history of being the base of operations for Columbian drug lord Carlos Lehder, who had a pal named Pablo Escobar. Lehder took over the island, build a huge runway, staffed it with armed guards, and brought in daily flights from Columbia, loaded with cocaine, and sometimes overloaded as one of the planes crashed and has been sitting at the bottom of the bay for over 40 years. I’m certain they had some incredible parties here too as those Columbian kingpins know how to do it up right.
Norman’s Cay is also the original planned location of the disastrous Fyre Festival back in 2017 when Ja Rule and Billy McFarland rented the island, hoping to turn it into a festival venue, but massively miscalculated the complexity of such an operation in a remote location.
Once SeaLight was anchored we took the dinghy around the south end of the island and to the location of the airplane wreck. I had been here 25 years before and the plane had deteriorated quite a bit, slowly turning into a giant coral reef, but was instantly recognizable as a large airplane, and a bit spooky as you can swim into the cabin area, where most of the cabin top is completely gone, but the aft portion still covered and was full of large fish. We do not have many regrets on this trip, but the one thing we should have done is gotten an underwater camera, as we’ve seen so many incredible things while snorkelling. Yet…not having a camera has allowed us to fully focus on the experience, something difficult to do when you are trying to capture everything with a device.
The area around the plane had a bottom of sandy seagrass, which is ideal conch habitat, and we found hundreds of juvenile conch there, but no adults. I went further out into the 20 to 30 foot depths and had the girls follow me around while I scanned the sea bed. I looked for a very long time but did not find a single harvestable conch, and I remember the last time I was here in the 90’s seeing conch scattered all over the bottom and easily collecting them. It’s clear the conch populations are not what they once were and I’m sure the conch fishermen need to go further and deeper to get them.
We stopped on a tiny island where we noticed a bench. The very new looking bench was placed there by a family in dedication to their parents, but also “To All Island Lovers”. It was very heartwarming and the three of us sat there and took a photo of our sandy feet just before topping forward and nearly falling off.
Back on SeaLight, I slung the hammock on the dinghy arch for Stella to lounge in while Ana and I mixed up a batch of bread and did some cleaning. When Stella had absorbed enough sunlight I took over and almost instantly fell asleep to the automatic swaying of the hammock provided by the slight ocean swells. It was glorious.
While waiting for the second rise, Ana and I went into shore and walked the beach all the way to the tiny resort on the island and home to the legendary MacDuff’s Restaurant and Bar. When I was last here 25 years ago with my dad and my buddy Stillman, it was a shack in the bushes with a gasoline powered blender, possibly the first in the world, and served cold Kaliks, greasy burgers, and not much else. In a brilliant stroke of luck the three of us had paddled into shore from the eastern anchorage, seen a weathered sign with “MacDuffs --->” and followed a path which led to a runway we had to cut across then right to the scabby bar. Upon entering we were shocked to find a wooden bar, with a few wooden stools, some license plates and photos stuck to the walls and a barkeeper there all alone, waiting to serve us. On the wall was a paper sign that read, “Happy Hour – Thursday – 4 to 6pm”
“What day is it?” I asked Stillman.
“Not sure,” he said, then counted on his fingers. “Thursday, I think.”
“What time is it?”
Nobody had a watch, but the barkeeper looked at hers and said, “3:55.”
During the next two hours we drank half their inventory, then drank the other half at full price after the Kalik Krazy had taken over. Sometime around 1am (or it could have been 9pm, time had lost all meaning) a German in a pink golf cart offered to drive us back to our dinghy. We poured ourselves into the cart, he poured us out at the beach, then we barely made it back to our sailboat paddling through the raging current.
Today’s visit was not like that. While Ana waited on the beach I walked by the No Trespassing sign and followed the wooden pathway that twisted around the rental cottages and to the back where I found the entrance to the bar. We knew from previous research that it was no longer a scabby wooden hut and had been transformed into an upscale island restaurant with astronomical prices to match – Rum Punch for $17, grouper for $46, or a cheeseburger for $30. I was angling for a visit, but Ana instead said she’d take me out to Eastside Marios when we were back home for the Thursday night “Amore for Two” for $50 in measly Canadian dollars, and we might even get it for less than that if Magnus was working there again. I took the deal.
We had a superior dinner on the boat, with a big pot of delicious chili Ana and Stella made, the fresh bread which turned out perfectly, a little spot of boxed red, and the remainder of the cupcakes for dessert. We followed this up with an in-boat screening of the 1999 “Notting Hill”, a film from the time when romance comedy could actually be pretty good. We loved it.
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