Rock Out With Your Conch Out

Treasure Cay – A quarter mile, swinging around on anchor all day

The locals have been telling us that March is a terrible month for weather in Abaco. Funny, none of the guides we purchased or websites we researched in advance of the trip mentioned anything about that. We have spent half of our time in the Abacos dodging weather and it’s become quite annoying. We have really loved the towns here, and both Hope Town in Elbow Cay and Man-O-War Cay are the nicest we’ve seen, but generally Abaco has not been our favourite island chain. We were really hoping to get to explore the islands of Green Turtle Cay and Manjack Cay just north-west of here, but we’ve been unable to get decent enough weather to pass through the dangerous Whale Cay Passage. It looks like there may be a window Saturday morning to get through, and once we do we plan to continue the long run west across the Little Bahamas Bank, hang a right at the Gulf Stream, and sail northwards to Fernandina Beach in northern Florida. We estimate it will be about a 50-hour trip if all goes according to plan, and right now the weather looks promising. If things change, then we will sail to the town of West End on Grand Bahama and wait there for a weather window to shoot back to southern Florida then start working our way northwards. In either case, our adventures in the Bahamas are coming to an end…for now.

The wind blew like stink all day so we kept busy on the boat preparing for the long trip back to the US. I did some work on the engine - tightening, cleaning, adjusting, testing. Ana cleaned the boat and had a long chat with her parents. We spoke to both the kids. Then, at around 4:30, the wind finally dropped and I took the opportunity to smoke a big fat cigar while relaxing at the bow of the boat. I’d been carrying that thing around for days, waiting for an opportune time, but none had arrived until now. The outside temperature was 22 degrees, and I was comfortable in shorts and a tshirt as the sun was shining and the wind was warm. I didn’t think about much as I watched my feet rising and dropping with the boat, the outline of SV Waddington anchored off our bow, dipping down between my toes where I tried to grasp it, then squirming out with the next wave. The luxury of being on a sailboat in the Bahamas continued to dazzle and impress me, even after being here for nearly three months. I looked around at the ten other vessels in this anchorage and wondered if they felt the same way.

Our trusty companions from SV Waddington rowed over for sundowners, bringing a bag of Harvest Cheddar Sunchips to add to the bountiful snack plate Ana had assembled with veggies, cheese, salami, and crackers. Dinner is served!

We sat, we talked, we laughed. As the sun dropped into the horizon Ben and I whipped out our sizeable conchs and did a duet at the bow of SeaLight. However, the instruments were not exactly in tune and my ear picked up some distasteful reverberations, so I will have to seek out a professional conch tuner at the earliest opportunity. Still, the conch calls were loud and proud and all other sailors in the anchorage appeared on the bows of their boats wearing their best whites and sailor hats as the saluted the sun and enjoyed our sweet melodies. Ben then took it too far when he started playing Jingle Bells on the conch, which drove everybody back inside their boats with horrific images of snow and snow shovels.

I had gathered up all the Bahamian coins we had on board to give to Ben and Kate but had put aside four shiny ten-cent pieces for us to make wishes. Shortly before hugging each other and having yet another in a long series of hasta luegos, we each made a wish and tossed a coin into the water.

Ben wished that we would meet again, in the North Channel of Lake Huron, for a fresh water summer sailing adventure.

Kate wished for safe travels for us, and the many others we’d all met and traveled with during our time in the Bahamas.

I wished for continued good health for all of us, because without that, not much else matters.

Ana wished that the bonds we’d built with each other and the many other incredible people we had met throughout our travels and adventures in the Bahamas would never be broken.

By the time we went to bed the wind had completely dropped and the boat sat still in the water. We would need a good sleep before the long journey ahead.

No Treasure in Treasure Cay

Great Guana Cay to Treasure Cay – 9 nautical miles sailed, 2 miles in dinghy, 1 kilometre walked

I visited Treasure Cay once, over 25 years ago. I came for a weekend trip with my brother Curtis, two Aussie buddies Johnny and Todd, and Steve from Scotland who I worked with in Nassau, all of whom remain good friends to this day. We had an amazing time as we performed death-defying stunts, drank one bar completely out of Kalik Gold, had our rental boat catch fire, and trampled all over Treasure Cay, which was a tropical paradise with restaurants, bars, boat rentals, stacks of condos and apartments, luxury homes, and loads of crazy tourists. We had a lot of fun here.

Today I returned, and the community is still reeling from Hurricane Dorian. The first thing Ana and I saw was the remains of a waterfront bar and restaurant, which the boys and I visited during our trip and dropped some serious coin at on Kaliks and conch fritters, but it was now an ugly scar on the land and a miserable reminder of what Hurricane Dorian did here in 2019. The densely packed housing corridors and commercial centres were now sparse, with small clusters of new housing slowly growing back, but the entire area was unrecognizable to me.

Waddington had rolled in early afternoon so Ben and Kate joined us for a walk around town. Besides the rotting and rusting destruction and empty lots, we did find one newly built strip plaza with a liquor store, real estate agency, small café, ladies clothing store, and a convenience store. We also found a spectacular beach with a surprising number of people on it, some walking up and down the two mile stretch while others just sat in the sand. We stood for a very long time, feet in the water, just looking out on the ocean, talking.

I felt more than a little bummed out visiting Treasure Cay so wasn’t in the greatest of mood, but my temperament improved markedly when Kate and Ben joined us for dinner and extended sundowner drinks in the comfort of SeaLight’s cockpit. Ana made a spectacular veggie pasta and rack of garlic breads that we demolished, leaving about 12 noodles of pasta and 7 grams of sauce for a midnight snack later. We had a great time with our friends and are going to be very sad to be leaving them as they have another month to go in Bahamas while we plan to start a long sail back to northern Florida on Saturday morning, weather pending (as usual). We may see them along the way north, but we may not. In either case, I know we’ll be hanging out with Ben and Kate somewhere in Canada before long. We haven’t seen Kevin and Ana for a few days as Kevin is holed up at Man-O-War Cay and Ana took a short trip to Florida to visit family, but are going to miss them too and suspect our paths will cross soon, in the US, Canada, or elsewhere.

For now, we have zipped SeaLight up tight in advance of the strong west and north-west winds due to arrive in the middle of the night and persist into tomorrow. We are hoping to get out on the dinghy to do some exploring, but that will depend entirely on the sea state as it could be too choppy. We’ll see.

Great Guana Cay: Nippers, Grabbers, and Wealthy Americaners

Marsh Harbour to Great Guana Cay – 15 nautical miles sailed, 5 miles in dinghy, 4 kilometres walked, 1 kilometre swam

Cruisers Net is an informal and local system of communication done between cruising boaters through the VHF radio. There is a famous Cruisers Net that runs out of Gore Bay in the North Channel of Lake Huron and I believe that was the first one we ever heard, but there are at least two of them in the Bahamas that we’ve heard – one out of Georgetown, Exuma and one here in Marsh Harbour.

The broadcast runs daily from Monday to Saturday and it always follows the same format. There is a single person who moderates the broadcast and they begin it at 8:15 on VHF channel 68. After a brief welcome and opening comments, they begin the broadcast with the low and high tide times and the weather forecast. Next, they ask for reports from any boaters in or in view of the three main ocean cuts leading into and out of the Abacos, to let other cruisers know if it is safe to transit these cuts. Then comes a segment for community news where any local events of interest to visitors are noted - things such as sailing races, fundraisers, dances, concerts, and cultural events. Following this is an open forum where anybody can pose questions to the cruising community, ask or offer advice, propose ideas, look for buddy boats, and so on. Finally, the broadcast ends with arrivals and departures, where vessels on the move report their movements.

It is a really cool system, all volunteer-based, and of great use and interest to cruisers, especially new cruisers like us who always have lots of questions. We were mainly interested today in knowing what the conditions at the Whale Cut would be like as we were hoping to transit it to get to the northern Abaco islands. Today, opinions varied. The moderator thought there might be an opportunity to sneak through, but I was surprised as strong north winds had been blowing which builds huge swells that take a time to come down, and it was still blowing at 15 knots from the north. Another boater said his weather app was reporting five to seven foot swells so he recommended avoiding the cut. Then, some a-hole that didn’t feel the need to identify himself, screamed into the VHF, “You fucking pussy!”

That came as a surprise, as the whole thing had been so orderly and polite up until that point. The vulgarist was roundly ignored and the broadcast carried on as if the brief message from today’s show sponsor had not happened, so I am guessing it’s not the first time this sort of things has occurred. Not all boaters are as classy as those travelling on Waddington, Domino, and SeaLight.

We sailed ten miles north-west out to Whale Cay to have a look. With my binoculars I first thought I could see several sailboats passing in either direction through the cut without difficulty, so we decided to try it, but as we got closer we realized the boats were actually just sailing around in the bay, south of the Whale, and we could see huge breaking waves in the passage channel, so we turned the boat around and headed the few miles east to Great Guana Cay instead to wait it out.

Remember how Ana had fallen in love with Spanish Wells and told everybody it was the most beautiful island in the Bahamas? Then we’d visited Man-O-War cay and she had to call everyone back and tell them that it was actually the best island in the Bahamas? Then we visited Hope Town on Elbow Cay and she had to call everyone back and tell them that it was actually the best island in the Bahamas. Well, after visiting Great Guana Cay, she didn’t have to call anybody back.

Great Guana Cay is home to two very famous bars, both destroyed then rebuilt since the hurricane. The one on the south side of the island is called Grabbers and the one on the north is Nippers, building on a theme of rowdy drunkenness. We landed our dinghy at Grabbers, finding a small space amidst all the speedboats, then had a look around. A row of biniki’d hottie teens lay prone on loungers, suntanning. Fifty-something ladies danced with their rum punches. Beer-bellied dads lined up at the huge bar, watching basketball and pounding light beers. Kids ran around with buckets, shovels, and sandy faces. Tourists came and went on rented golf carts. Michael Jackson yipped and squealed like a wounded coyote on the booming speakers. There were no Bahamian customers in sight. We kept walking.

It was a short stroll to the other side of the island, and as we approached Nippers through the tropical pathway, we saw driftwood signs nailed to palm tree trunks, announcing: The Party’s Not Over Until You’re Smiling for A Mug Shot. Beware of Intoxicated Humans. Bad Choices Make Great Stories.

Nippers has a phenomenal location, on a ridge overlooking a gorgeous beach, and it had been rebuilt as a primo resort with multiple decks, two swimming pools, two bars, and a restaurant, all sized to support a lot of customers. Here, the crowd was much the same; in fact I think it was the same, as it was clear the primary activity for island visitors was to zip back and forth between them all day until you either passed out under a coconut tree or your golf cart ran out of gas; at which point you probably staggered off your cart then passed out under a coconut tree.

Both bars (and the island) seemed to be populated primarily by wealthy Americans. How could I tell? Well, first we passed two wobbly couples walking between the bars and they shot us a “How y’all doin?”. Then there was this exchange between a mature couple in the Nippers exorbitantly priced gift shop as she was trying on shirts.

“Awh honey, I love this one,” drawled the wife as she posed in front of her husband in a Nippers shirt emblazoned with a winking pirate. “But I really love the other one too, the one with the piggies on front.”

“Don’t worry dear,” soothed her hubby as he tapped the bulge in his pocket and smiled. “You can have both of them.”

Another clue. Our subsequent walk took us to a grocery store which did not have prices on anything. I picked up a cabbage and asked the check-out clerk how much it was.

“It’s priced by the pound,” she said, looking at me, slightly annoyed. I looked back.

"OK. Uh, how much per pound?” I asked.

She sighed and gave me the Are you serious? stare, then typed a few things into a machine and said, “Two forty-nine a pound,” and was thinking Are you happy now, cheapass? There were no customer weigh scales so I held it up in one hand and balanced it against an imagined three-pound barbell in the other and estimated a cabbage worth about eight bucks. I gently placed the head back on the shoulders of the rack and we left.

We walked to a dive shop and I went inside to inquire on the cost of a two-tank dive. Inside was a woman at a computer and a man standing in the shop. It wasn't clear if both or either were the owners, or if they were maybe a couple, but after some discussion together, the woman told me they didn’t do individual dives anymore, but we could rent the boat, divemaster, and gear for $1500, maximum five divers, not including tax and tip. The obliterated look on my face let her know we wouldn’t be taking on that charter, so we instead struck up an unrelated conversation and asked about the catamaran out in the harbour, being buoyed by giant floats and with two high powered pumps emptying it of seawater. We learned it was indeed the catamaran that had sent the mayday call two days prior after getting impaled on a reef, and it had been towed here by a salvage company, who were doing hull patching and would then be towing it to Freeport for a full restoration.

Our conversation turned to weather and passage making and the man told us he sails here and back every year from Jacksonville, Florida on his catamaran. We told him of our proposed route to the US and he recommended another option - the route he typically takes - which involves leaving from the Whale Cut out into the ocean and sailing outside of the Great Bahama Bank, which requires fewer miles and is faster than taking the inside route to Great Sale Cay then West End. He typically makes it to Jacksonville in 48 hours and after consulting his weather apps, confirmed that our plan to leave Saturday looked like a good weather window to make the trip.

We thanked him profusely for his help and left the dive shop with a new route and the slighty uncomfortable knowledge that we had just two days left in the Bahamas. After returning to SeaLight, I immediately squeezed into my leotard wetsuit, grabbed my dive gear, and took off in search of conch and lobster, in a panic to make the most of the remaining time we had.

I didn’t find anything besides one juvenile conch and one big grouper who was much too far away to try and spear, and that was after covering a kilometer underwater in the Sea of Abaco. Everywhere I went looked very dead and I saw quite a bit of junk on the bottom – tires, the lower unit of an outboard engine, boat pieces, sunken wood. To make things worse, I had set my spear on the side edge of the dinghy so I could easily grab it from the water, but when I climbed back in and took off across surprisingly choppy water, it must have flipped off somewhere and I lost it.

Still, I was immensely happy being out on the water, ripping around in a dinghy in the turquoise waters of the Bahamas on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.

When I returned to the boat Ana was still busy working on yacht club stuff so I grabbed my scraper and brushes and cleaned the underside of the boat, which had become bearded in bountiful green algae strings with crusty barnacles joining as dazzling ornaments, working in partnership to slow SeaLight's sailing speeds. By the end I was disoriented, out of breath, and completely exhausted. There is something very unsettling with this job. Part of is it the breath holding, the physical exertion, and the possibility of a shark or barracuda appearing suddenly, but it’s also being inverted as you swim the underside of the boat, scraping, with ocean bottom above you and the boat below. Each time I come out for breath, it feels like I am going to lose my way and not find the surface, suffocate on ocean water, and slowly sink to the bottom, eyes blanking out, lifeless body visible to anybody looking down from a boat. I do not enjoy that job.

Ana and I had a lovely sundowner in the cockpit, I sounded the conch horn, and with the time shift of the past weekend (could Trump PLEASE do one great thing for humanity and trash Daylight Savings Time??) we didn’t start making dinner until 7:30. Dinner was excellent par usual and after cleaning we had just enough time to watch one episode of a new British crime series before retiring for a restful sleep on a calm and quiet ocean.

Mad Dog, Ice Cream Hawker, Beach Shelling, and Princess Concholopolous Gets a Trim

Marsh Harbour – 1 mile in dinghy, 6 kilometres walked

This March weather is starting to get to me. Since arriving in the Abacos we have been pinned down 75% of the time seeking shelter from weather fronts. You get two decent days then it’s four or five of crazy high winds where you can’t do much in the water and are left to either stay on your boat or explore land if it’s possible to get there by dinghy. And with the west and north-west winds we’ve been getting, protected anchorages are limited and usually already filled with with cruisers who were quicker and smarter than us. This is why we’ve been stuck in Marsh Harbour for a few days.

Here’s how bad it’s getting. We did another big walk into town today and my goal was to find a pencil eraser and pencil sharpener. I’ve been using a knife to sharpen pencils and we have approximately one millimeter of eraser remaining on the end of the one of the nubs. This boat job had been so far down the list, it wasn’t even on the list. But boredom had driven it to the top. I was successful in my mission and purchased four of those little eraser condoms that slip over the end of the pencil, plus a beautiful sharpener for $1.47 at a small variety store called Junkanoo Tricks. I also considered purchasing a bamboo tostonera compressor, thinking that frying and flattening plantains could wipe out a few hours on the boat while we’re stuck here, but the $12 price tag was decided to be too damaging to the finances.

Besides that, Ana and I walked a good distance (nearly getting attacked by an angry dog along the way) to a busy shipyard and snuck through it to find a small beach on the south-east side of Great Abaco Island. Along the way we were also stopped by a guy in a small, white, compact car with emblems proudly advertising “Gordon’s Homemade Ice Cream”. He motioned for me to come over then showed me a sheet of paper with the ice cream flavours as he pointed backwards towards the boot of the car, all without saying a single word. I don’t know if he wanted to sell us a 10 gallon drum of ice cream, or just a cone, but the whole thing was a bit weird as we stood there on a dusty, deserted road pantomiming with a mute dairy hawker.

The beach was full of shells and we spent a while collecting a handful of the best. I also found a good stick to beat down the mean dog on the return trip if he took another run at us. With nothing else to do, we spread out a towel and kicked back to absorb some sunshine and enjoy a break from the wind on this perfectly sheltered beach.

After a while a guy from one of the boats anchored offshore motored up in his dinghy. We recognized him from the other night at Wellington’s bar in Hopetown where he and his wife had been talking to Kate and Ben. We introduced ourselves and learned they were Sam and Jane from sailing vessel Scoot and were into their seventh year of cruising the Caribbean and beyond, but based in Portland, Maine. We had a very nice chat with him and we walked together back to the commercial area where we parted ways, but I fully expect we will run into them again somewhere down the line.

Ana and I were both getting a little hungry and we couldn’t bear returning the boat quite yet, so we stopped at a bayside restaurant called Colours, which we’d seen full of people most afternoons. It was a great place with views over the bay, standard Bahamian menu with comparatively low prices, cool servers, and an interesting crowd. A grizzled sailor with a trimmed, grey beard and captain’s hat sat at the bar, squinting through raccoon eyes at the television. A pack of loud talking locals, hair coiffed and clothes matched, gathered at one end, laughing and drinking. Four American women sat on the outside deck, getting an uncontrolled blow dry from the wild winds, spending most of their time gathering their hair. A mentally challenged local man sat alone on the deck, with posterboard paper, crayons, scissors, and a deck of adhesive letters, smiling at customers, occasionally bursting out in laughter, and cutting out letters and shapes, throwing the paper backings into the air and watching them blow away, then sticking the letters onto the poster board. Three American powerboaters (you can tell) sat in the corner, guffawing, chugging Sands Light lager, and talking about football and fishing.

We enjoyed a platter of Happy Hour conch fritters, two orders of chicken wings (only managed one), Kalik, Sands Radler, and a singular rum punch then checked off both “lunch” and “dinner” from our Things-To-Do-Today List. After a bouncy and splashy dinghy ride back to SeaLight, Ana did some yacht club work while I crafted my Princess Concholopolous shell into a fine musical instrument using a coping saw, Dremmel, some swear words, file, drill, and sandpaper, then blew a mighty note as the sun dropped into the horizon.

Cool Bahamians, Blowing the Conch Horn, A Squall, and a Dragging Anchor

Marsh Harbour – 2 miles in dinghy, 8 kilometres walked

Bahamians are cool. They dress cool, they walk cool, their hair is cool, and they talk cool. I remember seeing a t-shirt in the Nassau straw market that read, “I Identify As Bahamian.” I should have bought that shirt because I’d like to be cool, and Bahamians are as cool as they come.

Today we did a long walk into town and saw areas of Marsh Harbour we had not yet seen, including many commercial shops, all newly constructed since the hurricane. I left Ana browsing in a liquation store while I continued walking the busy road with our empty propane cylinder headed for Abaco Gas. I passed a new strip mall called Resilience Plaza and across the street was a worn rest area with benches, canopies, and a small pond full of turtles. A sign threatened, Do Not Remove Wildlife From The Pond. I wouldn’t dream of it. I sat on a bench for a while and watched the little turtle heads bobbing in and out of the water. Then I continued on my way.

I reached Abaco Gas and met a staff member who had lived through the hurricane. We talked.

“I was in Coopers Town, up north, and it wasn’t hit as bad,” he said as he screwed the propane fill hose into the tank standing in the back of a pickup and eased open the valve. “We were lucky, only lost a few buildings.”

“Which place was hit the worst,” I asked.

“Marsh Harbour. The news said there were 35 dead here but my friend is a coroner and he picked up 33 bodies himself, and he wasn’t the only one doing it,” he said, shaking his head. “Those were our friends and family. Everybody lost somebody.”

“It’s unbelievable the damage a hurricane can do.”

“You know, it wasn’t actually the hurricane that did the worst. It was the 200 tornados that spun off from it, which was a little more than normal. That’s what really destroyed Marsh Harbour,” he told me as he swatted away the flies swarming around the tank, attracted by the fumes.

As I pondered this I realized you would have to be from the Caribbean to consider any devastating and deadly wind activity to be “normal”.

“It’s amazing what you’ve been able to rebuild here,” I said.

“It was the wealthy foreign homeowners and NGOs who supplied massive amounts of money and people to clean up and rebuild. They did so much for us. We’ll never forget it.”

The other staff member who was filling my tank handed me an invoice for $11, far cheaper than any fill we’ve ever got in the US or Canada for the 11 pound cylinder.

“Well, it was great meeting you. Good luck with everything.”

"Thanks for visiting us my man. Come back soon,” he said as he waved me off.

I had a feeling we would be.

I walked back to meet Ana then we continued to the grocery store to pick up a few things. I waited outside while Ana did the shopping. I watched the Bahamians coming and going. There were two men, dressed in long pants, fine shirts, and perfectly trimmed beards holding up religious posterboard signs: TRUST IN GOD, JESUS LOVES YOU; HE WILL SAVE YOU. But they weren’t bugging anybody, and one of them seemed to know everybody walking into the store. One man stopped and said, “OK, let’s pick up this religious discussion where we left off last time. So you said that….” They had a long conversation about topics supernatural, laughing and smiling with no yelling, arguing, or lecturing. Another man with thick dreads and a permanent smile stood beside a grocery cart with a bunch of boxes inside. A woman with an immaculate beehive fist bumped him and they laughed together. Another gave him a hug. Soon a taxi arrived and they held a loud conversation as he loaded his boxes into the car, then through the open window as they were driving away hollered to nobody in particular as he motioned to the driver, “Roxy! This is my man right here. He help me out, all the time. Let’s go Roxy!” A young Bahamian lady, red dress hugging her Bahamian curves, with long eyelashes, and hair so intricate I couldn’t tell what was going on, strutted by, with a practiced walk and dark shades. A older couple walked out pushing a cart together; he wore a thick gold chain that matched his gold tooth. She was painted and pressed for a night out, but they were just grocery shopping. A crowd of perfumed, colourful ladies came out together and crowded the exit as one of them told a story and they all burst out laughing, bent over, while other exiting customers waited patiently, and joined in the laugh. Two studly dudes walked in, v-shaped, with tight tshirts straining to contain their thick back and arm muscles, black track suit pants veined by their thick quads, and they wore expensive trainers. A plain looking man sat on a milk crate, and caught my glance, then walked over. He said something in Bahamian I could not decipher, so I asked him to repeat. Without understanding, I laughed and nodded my head. He fist bumped me and said, “Thanks for visiting us brother.”

These are the people that you meet, when you’re standing on the street, they’re the people that you meet each day. In the Bahamas…

We walked back to the dinghy with a blanket of swirling thick black clouds flanking us to the north, bearing down quickly. I was pretty sure we were going to get soaked, but we made it to the dinghy, loaded our gear, unlocked it, then took off at full speed to the boat over the growing waves and line squall bearing down. We arrived at SeaLight, quickly tied up, unloaded the gear, then just as I was hoisting the dinghy up into the arch Ana pointed to the boat beside us and said, “Oh my God, what is that?” A line of torrential rain was sprinting across the anchorage, blanketing everything in grey, as two cracks of lightning hit the ground and thunder filled our ears. The squall hit us and we were surrounded by grey rain pounding the boat as I finished hoisting and tying the dinghy and pulled the plug to let the quickly accumulating water drain. The deluge lasted no more than fifteen minutes, but long enough to wash the thick layer of salt off the boat.

We retired to the cabin. As Ana worked on yacht club stuff, I became engrossed by my phone, adding in dozens of reviews, adding new places, and uploading photos in the NoForeignLand app. I was rescued from this downward spiraling screen zombie episode by Ben, who called to ask if we wanted to join them on Waddington for a sundowner. Within ten minutes we were in the dinghy and on our way across the lumpy anchorage.

As usual, the conversation was effortless and funny. Ben had crafted a magnificent horn from a conch shell and we decided his level of proficiency developed from at least three days of practice should be sufficient to earn him a place in a jazz band Carnegie Hall appearance as the virtuoso conch player. As the sun dropped, Ben put the conch to his lips and bellowed a long singular note, which earned a response from at least three other conch players in the anchorage. Honestly, we didn’t know anything about these conch sundowner salutations despite being cruising nearly three months, but over the past week we’ve been listening for it and have heard the sorrowful conch melodies each night as the sun dropped. I need to make myself one of those.

Ben was on a roll this afternoon and delivered this fine Dad Joke, on the topic of cruising the Bahamas:

"We don’t do it because it is easy; we do it because we thought it would be easy.”

With that, we took leave of Ben and Kate, saying a heartfelt “Hasta luego”, and returned to SeaLight and first prepared the boat for the heavier winds which were coming tonight, then prepared a delicious dinner of buttered dorado, couscous and rice, and mango coleslaw. 

At 1:30am, the anchor alarm on my phone started shrieking and we found the anchor had somehow come loose (despite having held solidly for hours) and dragged at least 60 feet, putting us too close to the catamaran anchored behind us and the shallow water. I retrieved the anchor at the bow while Ana motored the boat into the screaming wind then we repositioned her and dropped the anchor amidst the many nearby boats.

She held tight the rest of the night.

A Decision to Make

Marsh Harbour – 0 miles

With the south-east winds howling outside, a storm on the way tomorrow, and the prospect of north winds for the foreseeable future, we had a decision to make. We are in the south Abacos and to get to the north Abacos, which include Green Turtle Cay and Manjack Cay, we must pass through the Whale Cut, a passage that can only be made with calm seas or southerly winds. Any wind from the north builds up swell and makes it treacherous.

Today, we could have made it through the Whale Cut and into the north, but the problem was there are few good anchoring options for the storm winds which were due to clock from the south east all the way to the north over the period of a few hours on Monday, then blow in hard from the northwest then north all the way until at least Saturday. Of the two 360 degree anchorages, all the mooring balls were already booked and the cost of dockage was more than we were willing to spend, leaving nothing but very poor anchoring options. I was tempted to go anyway, as we’ve been leaning more and more towards getting back to the US as soon as possible to avoid any potential border closures, and many of the wind predictions we’ve seen previously have not turned out as bad as expected. But it would be taking a risk, and we decided that staying put in Marsh Harbour with our good anchorage was the better option.

This continual weather monitoring and scenario planning is not something we had much understood or appreciated before getting down to the Bahamas. Finding yourself in a situation where there are storm winds coming and you have nowhere to hide is both scary and dangerous - sometimes life-threatening dangerous. On this trip we have taken many calculated risks in the pursuit of covering as much ground as possible, seeing everything there is to see, and avoiding lengthy stops at a single location (except for Annapolis and Fort Lauderdale, which were planned and deliberate). We haven’t typically been “playing it safe”, but today we did. The bright side is that once the winds shift north we should be able to leave Marsh Harbour and spend a couple of nights at Great Guana Cay and wait for south winds to make the Whale Cut.

We did not leave the boat and I don’t know where the time went. Made some calls, did some reading, did some writing. It felt like a wasted day, and if I had done this on a Sunday before a back-to-work Monday, I would have hung my head in shame after lashing myself with a studded belt. I didn’t even do any boat jobs.

Provisioning in Marsh Harbour and Dancing the Reggaeton

Marsh Harbour – 9 nautical miles sailed, 1 mile in dinghy, 4 kilometres walked

My plan to take an early morning paddleboard ride while winds remained light was thwarted by laziness. Quite simply, I didn’t feel like unroping the tightly lashed paddleboard from the deck and dropping the dinghy from the hoist, then having to do everything in reverse again after a 30 minute paddle. So instead I did some writing and drank hot barley, which was highly enjoyable, but of little health benefit.

We pulled anchor and sailed the nine miles to Marsh Harbour, found a good anchoring spot in sufficient water and dropped the hook then dinghy’d into town. We walked to the Aloha Java Cafe coffee shop we’d seen at the east end of town last time we were here and sat down for a drink. Both Ana and I have been pretty underwhelmed with Marsh Harbour as the town seems to be just a grid of industrial streets with shops scattered haphazardly throughout. The town centre seems limited to the marinas on the waterfront with precious little for other sites of interest down that stretch. Knowing the town had been hit hard by the hurricane in 2019 I checked the Google satellite view to see what was there before. And what I found was shocking. The images must have been taken shortly after the hurricane, because there is nothing left – no docks, no marinas, and hardly any standing buildings. I went further and pulled up some Youtube drone videos after the storm. There was nothing but rubble. The town had been completely destroyed.

With this knowledge, I can now say that Marsh Harbour looks fabulous, incredible, beautiful and the people here are clearly tough, resilient, and doggedly determined to rebuild their town, no matter how long it takes. I am glad we can spend some time and money here.

After our coffee date and loading up at the Maxwell’s grocery store, which is huge, with an incredible selection of merchandise, and prices that are similar or cheaper than what we found in the southern US, we returned to the boat, had dinner, then put together a few snacks for a sundowner. Sometime after 7 pm we were joined by Ana, Kevin, Ben, and Kate for a lengthy and fun cockpit party, that ended with a brief frenzy of reggaeton dancing.

We are treating every get together with our friends as our last, as each of our individual travel plans change from day to day and we really do not know where we are going to be, but with the hope we do wind up together somewhere. After a small bit of Spanish practice at the end of the night, we decided it would be prudent to simply say, “Hasta luego,” or “Hasta la proxima,” and not “Goodbye.”

Goodbye is too final.