4/4/00 | Ragged Island, and back up the Cays

• 3/29 Ragged Island / Hog Cay
• 3/30 Nurse Cay
• 3/31 - 4/3 Flamingo Cay
• 4/4 Blue Hole by Water Cay / banks south of Hog Cay Cut

end of the road

We anchored at Hog Cay on Wednesday afternoon (at 22° 14.4' N, our most southerly anchorage) and immediately dropped the dinghy for a visit to Ragged Island. The weekly mailboat was in, anchored just inside the pass between Ragged Island and Hog Cay, and half-dozen skiffs zoomed back and forth across the shallow flats, carrying goods from the mailboat into Duncan Town. We dinghied in down the old channel, only two or so feet deep and heavily silted around the edges, to the town dock at the foot of a steep hill. The men at the dock directed us to tie up between two local skiffs; one stepped forward to take our line and whip it around a post. We were the only yachties at Duncan Town that day.

Ragged Island, with no natural harbor or deep-water access, seems an unlikely place for the only town in the Jumentos, but it was originally a sizeable settlement, based on the development of large salt ponds providing salt for the Cuban and Haitian trade. Now there are only 70 or so people. Many of the men fish, and there are a few local businesses, but most of the residents, according to one woman we spoke with, work for the government. We're not sure exactly what they do, but as Duncan Town is a sort of border town, out on the edge of the Bahamian wilderness, we suspect a lot of them are a sort of border patrol. We have seen a lot of unmarked planes and helicopters in the Jumentos; perhaps they are on the lookout for illegal fishing vessels from Cuba and Haiti, or refugee boats, or drug runners. We know they are at least counting yachts, because the storekeeper told us, "Lots of boats come this season. Eleven yachts in the Cays right now."

The Jumentos Cays are always referred to as "The Cays" (pronounced "keys", as always in the Bahamas) by the locals; they say, "How long have you been in The Cays?" or, "Is this your first time in The Cays?" They don't think of themselves as Bahamians as much as they think of themselves as "Cays-ians", Ragged Islanders. The shopkeeper proudly told us she'd lived there all her life, "fifty-two years now." The young man who worked at the Batelco office and hooked us up to the outside world for email and an upload was also a native, but got away every chance he could. "I go to the States. Miami. Go shopping, can't go shopping here."  He indicated his trendy T-shirt, his sneakers. "Can't get nothing here. I go to Miami every vacation I get. Makes me remember I living."

We headed south toward the far end of town, toward the airstrip, and fell in with a woman walking along the road. She'd grown up in Nassau, the big city, but had lived in Duncan Town for nine years. "The man I'm involved with, he a Ragged Island man."  She said that it had been stressful at first, to move out to a tiny town on a tiny island, but she was glad she was away from Nassau, with its high crime rate and all the problems of a city. "Now sometimes I feel almost like I belong here."

Life in Duncan Town is clearly not like life in other places. It makes me think of what it must have been like to live in Alaska fifty years ago -- although much warmer, of course!  The weekly mailboat is their lifeline to the rest of the country, carrying not only mail but also groceries, packages, and travelers to and from other islands. The shopkeeper's car, needed to ferry goods from the dock up to her store, had been sent by mailboat to Nassau for repairs:  "I think I get it back in a month." There's no scheduled air service, but $720 will charter a plane to Nassau for people who want a faster trip than the mailboat offers.

The grocery store carries only canned and dry goods; each resident orders produce, eggs, and milk in advance, and only that much is brought in from Nassau. We bought cold drinks and ice cream, half-melted and right off the mailboat; we had peered in the locked doors of the store until someone on the street saw us and knocked on the door of the shopkeeper's house to rouse her. That's the way the store works here, same as the two bars and the restaurant. If a local wants a drink at the Fisherman's Lounge, he knocks on Sheila's door and asks her to open her bar for him. Tourists don't come to Ragged Island.

The Ragged Islanders would like to see scheduled air service. They would like to have a reverse-osmosis plant for water desalinization -- they depend on water-catchment systems on each roof to fill cisterns during the rainy season -- and they would like to see the harbor and channel dredged, to make the town more accessible to visiting yachts. Some tourist money would help the economy. The Bahamian government, the locals say, talks about doing these things. There are already paved roads, streetlights, a Batelco station -- pretty nice for a small town on the frontier. But there are still no regular flights into Duncan Town, no reverse-osmosis water, no harbor suitable for anything larger than a dinghy. And every year, a few more people leave Duncan Town.

back toward snivelization

We had a quiet and solitary night in our anchorage near Hog Cay, except for one odd incident. Sometime after midnight, we were awoken by the sound of a helicopter -- a very close helicopter. It seemed to be hovering directly above us; we could hear the whoosh of air on our canvas, beneath the thumping of its blades. Our anchor light, suspended in our cockpit beneath our bimini, was hung where it could be seen by other boats, but we'd never anticipated having to be seen by helicopters. Why were they checking us out?  We half-expected to hear orders shouted over a bullhorn, but after a few moments the helicopter flew off.

The next morning, a good southeast wind brought us back up along the Cays to Nurse Cay, where we rejoined Whish in a small cove just big enough for our two boats. We did one last diving trip for lobsters, as the end of the season was approaching, but our lobster dinner turned out to be disappointing, as the bugs were somewhat mushy, instead of having the firm texture and sweet taste we love. Maybe the hormones that go through them as mating season approaches change their taste. We'd also noticed that the water in the southern Jumentos seemed to be greener, warmer, and murkier than it had been further north, and maybe that was a factor too.

We hiked around Nurse Cay a bit and then lifted anchor for the 28 miles north to Flamingo Cay. The wind had shifted mostly south, and we'd loaned Whish our digital camera so they could take some photos of Windom under sail, but shortly after we sailed through Nurse Channel and out into the deep water, the wind died to almost nothing, and we ended up motoring most of the way.

Because of the predicted south wind, we chose to anchor in the bight at Flamingo Cay's northern end. This turned out to be a beautiful anchorage, against a beach with rocky arms stretching northward at each end. The bottom was white sand, and the water had that amazing glassy clarity that we had missed further south. Ten feet of water looked like two, and in the stillness we could see every shell and rock and bit of seagrass on the bottom. We could not resist jumping in as soon as the anchor was down.

The following day was hot and still almost windless. We spent much of it in the water; after a quick grocery snorkeling trip (one hogfish and one schoolmaster snapper) we jumped back in and just swam around the anchorage, splashing and playing with Mallory and Jeffery. A few barracuda, more watchful than hostile, patrolled the bay, and we also saw a big stingray "flying" across the bottom.

anchor story #9

It had been a beautiful day. Unfortunately, it was a hellish night, and it was entirely our own fault. Jeff had been making nervous noises about the weather; although there was only two or three knots of wind, it was coming from the northeast, where the anchorage was open to the wind and waves. We knew from the weatherfaxes that a front was coming through, but we interpreted the faxes to say that it would be a weak front, and although we could see a line of clouds approaching, the pattern of wind directions seemed to suggest that the front had already passed. (Usually the wind shifts to the south and southwest before a front, then northeast afterward. It had gone through the southwest earlier in the day.) We thought that the winds would remain light until they clocked around further to the east.

Three boats arrived that afternoon, and two of them joined us in the north-facing anchorage. The third tucked around on the western shore of Flamingo Cay. This reassured us; they wouldn't anchor here unless they thought the wind wouldn't strengthen out of the north, right?  (In retrospect, they no doubt thought the same thing when they saw our boats already there. Crowd mentality is a dangerous thing.)

Too bad the weather doesn't obey majority rule. We were over on Whish, playing Boggle after a shared fish dinner, when the wind strengthened and the waves started to roll into the anchorage. Game pieces flew off the table as we rocked and bucked. Climbing into our dinghy was like trying to jump from one galloping horse to another. The dinghy ride wasn't so bad, but Britt had a devil of a time lassoing Windom when we got there.

Once we had both managed to get aboard without falling in, we got to work. Britt checked the chafe gear on the anchor while I reattached the wheel (we take it off at anchor so we have more room in the cockpit). Then we cleared the cockpit of all the junk that had accumulated over the past two lazy days. The boat rolled wildly as we worked. I heard a crash from below and raced down the companionway, too late to save the half-full teakettle from jumping off the stove and spilling water all over the cabin sole.

Our anchor seemed to be holding just fine. The only problem was that it was in the wrong place.We had set our anchor for the southeast wind, but now the wind was northwest, so we were further into the bight of the anchorage, and low tide was approaching. Our depthsounder readings were jumping in concert with the boat, but they were only a bit above six feet and we knew we'd be bumping bottom shortly. We both wished we could just rocket out of that anchorage and around the corner, but it was well after dark, and there was no way we were going to drive around these reefy waters with our lousy charts without being able to see where we were going.

So we had a dilemma:  should we lift a good anchor in order to go forward and try to anchor in a deeper spot?  With the wind and waves howling, the boat bucking in the waves, there was a chance we would be driven into even shallower water before getting set. Or, should we motor forward and to the side, and drop the second anchor where it would give us a little more depth -- but on the other hand, make it even harder for us to get out in a hurry if needed?

We opted to drop the second anchor. Anchoring was pretty tough; we had the foredeck lights on but I could barely see Britt's signals, and he couldn't hear me at all. We got a good set with the Spade and dropped back, but we only gained about eight inches of depth from it. Despite our exhaustion, we set an anchor watch -- we were both too tense to sleep as it was. Shortly before low tide, we bumped for the first time.

Fortunately, the bottom under us was sand, so it wasn't too bad. We bumped a half-dozen times, when the waves slammed us down, but the tide started coming back in around midnight. We both managed to sleep for a few hours despite the horrendous motion (worse than being underway!) and at dawn we got the hell out of there. Whish and the other boats that had been in the anchorage all did likewise, motoring out of the bight and around to the west side of Flamingo Cay, where we all anchored carefully and went back to bed. I slept until almost 11:00 am, but was pretty much a zombie the rest of the day anyway. I don't think anyone felt too great that day.

cavings and cravings

After we caught up on our sleep, and the winds moderated and swung east, we explored Flamingo Cay. We snorkeled on some nice reefs (and speared some more fish), then hiked up a short trail to a pedestal which used to have a navigation light on it. The light has long been missing, and the pedestal itself looks like it would need some work to get it even into enough shape to maintain a light.

The shore just south of our anchorage gets steep and cliffy, and in the cliff is a fantastic cave. We turned off the motor and rowed our dinghy into the cave, preferring to hear only the sounds of the water lapping against the cave walls as we coasted in. The floor of the cave is under only a few feet of water at the entrance, and it slants upward quickly so that half of the cave is completely dry. There's an entrance to the dry part, also, and we hiked in later. An old pile of conch shells rests in one corner, and we noticed that the limestone floor appears to have petrified conch shells embedded within it. Perhaps the cave was inhabited by the Lucayans, the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Bahamas.

Conch is still abundant near Flamingo Cay. Whish easily collected a few dozen, and at our request gave us three. We rarely gather conch, because they are a lot of trouble to clean and prepare, but I had a special meal in mind.

I hated to admit it, but I'd been getting a little tired of fish. Sure, we've been eating a wide variety of fish, prepared in a wide variety of ways, but even after Thai stir-fried hogfish, grilled Caribbean-spiced grouper, and baked snapper parmesan, I was craving something different. Specifically, I was craving pizza.

Britt, however, wasn't so willing to give up seafood, especially when I told him we had plenty of ingredients to make a vegetarian pizza. But somehow, fish pizza didn't sound very appetizing to either of us. Then I thought of it -- conch pizza!

It turned out great. Donna made conch fritters, I made conch pizza, and we all "conched out" until we were happily stuffed. Now that I got my pizza fix, I'll happily go back to being a fish-eater for a while.

into the blue

With a new moon tide coming up, and another cold front expected to blow in, it was time to leave the Jumentos. There was still one thing we hadn't done that we really wanted to do:  dive the blue holes off Water Cay. The locations of these holes, latitude and longitude, are given in our cruising guide, and since we had decided to go back to George Town, where we could get airfills, we decided that we might as well use up the air we had.

We set a course from Flamingo Cut to the cut just south of Water Cay and right to the deeper and larger of the holes. Britt spotted it from a half-mile off, standing out from the pale aqua of the banks: a roughly circular patch a few hundred feet across, of the dark blue that signals deep water. It was a nearly windless day and we could see everything clearly through the crystalline water:  coral heads and sea fans on the shallow shelf, big fish swimming in the deep blue. We motored across the hole and watched the depthsounder rapidly go from 17 to 120 feet, then angled into the current and carefully dropped the anchor in a sand patch right at the edge.

We suited up and jumped in. We knew the current would slack off once we got into the hole, so we swam the short distance to the edge and descended to about 40 feet, just inside the rim of the hole. A huge detached pillar made a convenient landmark, and we could also just see the shape of Windom's hull looming beyond the edge.

The first thing we noticed were the sharks. Lots of them. This had been mentioned in the guidebook, so we weren't taken by surprise, but it was just a little spooky to see four of them cruising through the water ahead of us. They were blacktip sharks, we think, and they were pretty darn big, but fortunately for my heart rate they glided quickly out of sight.

The corals and sponges along the sides of the hole were drab compared to some of the colorful growth we've seen, but the fish were spectacular. The usual reef fish abundantly skimmed along the walls, while schools of permit and jack swirled through the deep water in the middle. In some places the sides of the hole slanted down like a hillside, while other sections were like cliffs, dropping down to a sandy floor seen dimly below. We swam down one cliff face to112 feet before returning to a more sedate 80-foot depth.

I was watching a grouper when Britt caught my attention and pointed out toward the blue center. My eyes first took in the tail ("shark"), then the long body ("big shark"), then the distinctive head ("Yikes!") It was the first time I'd been in the same water with a hammerhead. He must have been ten or twelve feet long, and he ignored us completely as he swam by.

It seemed like we were just getting farther and farther away from the boat, but when we experimentally surfaced we discovered we had almost made the complete circuit. We returned to our landmark pillar with perfect timing, just as we were getting close to the end of our air supply and our allotted dive time, and returned to the surface world, happy to have spent a little time in this magical place.