Georgetown – 4 miles by paddleboard, 4 miles in dinghy, walked 500 metresThe winter winds in the Bahamas are relentless. It is always windy and they are predominantly from the east, but do circle around to every direction if you wait long enough. Strangely, today’s forecast was for very light winds shifting to nearly no wind, so we took advantage of it and had a beach day.
I began my morning with a long paddleboard ride, nearly four miles, meandering through the anchorage northwest then followed the shoreline southeast all the way to the famous cruisers hangout, the Chat ‘N’ Chill Beach Bar & Grill, established in 1998 as a day camp for boaters. It is situated on a picture-perfect horseshoe shaped beach, with powder sand, shaded by pine and palm trees which are hung with all manner of swinging devices to play on, like a big jungle gym. There are several volleyball courts, cornhole games, walking paths, a bar and restaurant, a conch shack, and I even saw a masseuse station. As it was early I was the only one there, so I wandered around and couldn’t help feeling I was on the set of a movie - it’s that idyllic. Of course the building structures were falling apart, like everywhere else we’ve seen in Bahamas, with the salt-saturated air and relentless UV but still, idyllic.
Back at the boat I started gathering tools for a visit up the mast, something I end up having to do at least once a year, and today was the day for it with the calm weather. I strapped on the bosun’s chair, attached the main halyard to it, then attached the spinnaker halyard directly around my waist as a backup. Then, I started to climb, made easier with the salt-sticky aluminum mast surface which held the soles of my feet like Velcro. Ana wound up the halyards on the winches as I climbed. I first reattached the radar reflector to the spreader, which had been partially knocked loose, then I continued close to the top of the mast to tighten the jib. For some reason, I hadn’t been able to raise the final three inches of jib from the mast halyard, but with me yanking on it from the top and Ana pulling on the line at the bottom, we got it. I then climbed right to the top of the mast to secure the windicator device which had been loose ever since we put the mast up back in Castelton. This is the v-shaped instrument that indicates the “no-go” sailing zone, which is about 30 degrees to the wind, and it also has an arrow that points to the actual wind direction. At that moment, I took a minute to look around and admire the spectacular view over the anchorage, the hills to the east, and west to Georgetown. I had considered bringing up my phone for nice aerial shots, but decided against it as we did not need another killed device; if the 60 foot drop onto the deck didn’t do it, the secondary bounce over the edge and into the seawater certainly would.
The last job on the way down was to figure out how I could attach my new deck light to the mast. I was hoping I could secure it to the pre-existing mounts for radar, but upon inspection that was not going to work, so I was going to have to get an appropriately sized tap to drill into the mast. Maybe in Nassau.
With the work done, we moved onto the next project – helping Magnus change his phone number. Overnight Ana started getting some strange messages from Magnus on text and she knew right away that somebody was spoofing his number, as when she asked him to verify his middle name and the names of our deceased hamsters, the respondent fell silent.
After a flurry of calls to tech support, password changes, and a bunch of other stuff Ana and Magnus collaborated on, it was finally done and we piled into the dinghy and headed over to Chat ‘N’ Chill in the heat of the early afternoon. We found ourselves at a picnic table in the middle of a meeting of the elders of the cruising committee, folks that had been coming here for decades, and were the beating heart of the Georgetown cruising community. They sensed fresh meat and immediately tried recruiting us.
“Did you know Mary got cancer and her and Bob had to go back to the States?” asked the matriarch leader at the head of the picnic table.
“Who’s Mary and Bob?” I asked, taking the bait.
“They are in charge of counting boats. For decades they have gone around each week in a dinghy counting all the boats in the harbour. Then we announce the total on Cruisers Net, VHF channel 72, at 8am.”
“Why don’t you get somebody with a drone to do it? You could probably find software or have the AI write a script that would do the counting automatically,” I suggested. Big mistake.
“So…you could do that for us?”
“Hell no. I don’t have a drone. And I'm not a programmer. It’s only a suggestion,” I said, then added, “I’m just the ideas guy.”
The elders were intrigued and discussed it amongst themselves, hive mind buzzing, as we went for a walk around the grounds. We returned after a while and the meeting was still on.
“See that guy in the yellow shirt?” the chairperson said, pointing at me. “He’s got a drone and is going to take over boat counting.”
“What?” I said, shocked. “I don’t have a drone. I ain’t counting boats. And we’re only staying here a couple of days. I’m just the ideas guy, remember?”
The elders lowered their eyebrows as me, as if I’d betrayed them. One of them spoke up, the one wearing the Buffalo Bills cap, granny shades, and suspenders on trunks.
“Well then which committee do you want to head up? There’s a lot of work to do before the cruisers regatta in a few weeks, you know. We need help with logistics, you want to lead logistics? And your wife, she could probably take on merchandise, right? Here, let me pencil your names in.”
Holy hell, we were caught in a volunteer firestorm. It was inducing an anxiety attack, and I’ve never even had one, but if it causes shortness of breath, heavy sweating, confusion, dribbles of urine in the swimsuit, desperation, and an overwhelming urge to flee into the thorny bushes at race pace, that’s definitely what it was.
“Folks, we cannot join any committees, forums, discussion groups, task forces, or project teams,” I explained. “That’s all we do at home. This is our sabbatical, we’re here to take a break from all that. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. No can do. Thanks, but no thanks. Sayonara. Smell ya later.”
“What about volleyball? You guys want to play volleyball? Let’s play volleyball!” another of the elders announced in a squeaky voice as he rushed onto the sand court beckoning us forward.
With that, we promptly left the Meeting of the Elders and walked over to the conch shack to see what was going on. And what was going on was a dozen stingrays swimming around in the shallows, looking for handouts, letting people pet them, as the fisherman in the nearby boat was cleaning his conch catch and giving people the entrails to feed to the rays. After coaching me on the finer points of cleaning conch, he handed me a pile of conch guts, which I transferred over to young Anna’s hand, who transferred it to the mouth of a hungry stingray. The conch shack was also selling the fish catch of the fisherman. I asked how much for the snappers.
“$60 for the big ones, $25 for the small ones,” the conch salad lady told me. “And that big lobster’s for sale too, it’s our last one.”
She didn’t tell me the price of the lobster, probably after seeing my stunned reaction from the quotation for the granddad snapper. We returned to the volleyball court to watch the flubbed sets, the failed bumps, the back-straining dives, and the random serves from the collection of seven per side middle aged ex-non-volleyballers who were having a hell of a good time.
There was too much of a good thing going on at the Chat ‘N’ Chill. We had to leave.
We dinghy’d way north to the second of four beach bars we’d been told about – this one a local place called “DA SAND BAR” (his capitalization, not mine). It was a shack situated on a beautifully rounded spit of perfect sand with empty beach chairs out front, a covered up pool table, and plywood closed over the windows. The painted “Always Open” sign may have been incorrect.
“It’s because of the election,” a fellow cruiser told us, who had just arrived with a litter of kids and a Yeti of wine. “Nobody’s allowed to sell alcohol until 6pm. So you can still get wine with your dinner tonight. You'll be okay.”
She must have mistaken me for the type of cruiser who attends Bahamian dinners out deserving of wine. We had a short chat with her then pushed off and cruised back to SeaLight, vowing to return when DA SAND BAR resumed to normal operations.
It was time to reintroduce the Prestone Rope Swing, made famous by our last sailboat Bella Blue. I dumped the remaining antifreeze into a butter dish then tied the empty Prestone container to our spinnaker halyard and set it up for a test. It was already 4:30 but the day was still scorching hot. Stella was keen to try it, but not before I tested it out, in case a flaw in the design led to me splattering myself on the bow of SeaLight. I climbed our giant aluminum solar arch, grasped the Prestone bottle, then screamed a war cry as I launched and swung through the air, letting go just before I decapitated myself on the anchor chain.
“Perfectly safe, girls,” I hollered from the water.
Anna didn’t fall for it, but Stella did as my trusting daughter. She took a few swings and we made to sure to capture stills and video for online bragging purposes. I did the same, but with sunglasses on and a cigar in my mouth to look extra cool. The girls then inflated our pool toy loungers and floated in the ocean for a long time while Ana and I had a perfect sundowner on the deck of SeaLight, watching the orange ball slowly drop into the horizon, putting the wraps on another beautiful day in the Bahamas.
