The weather finally gave us a break on April 17th, and we motored out of Red Shanks under clear and calm skies. Boats were pouring out of Georgetown in all directions, but we and Severn Star turned southeast after exiting the harbor, bound for the Salt Pond area of Long Island.
The first part of the route was familiar to us, as it was the same as we took to and from the waypoint just north of Hog Cay Cut, but instead of going south through the cut, we turned a bit left and continued east-southeast. This put us at a better angle to the gentle northerly breeze which was slowly materializing, so we shut off the engine and sailed the rest of the way at a stately 3 knots. Fortunately, it was less than 40 miles to Long Island, so we were in no big hurry. Severn Star put up a big yellow drifter and slowly drifted by us. We're going to have to get a better light-air sail.
In addition to our fishing lines, we put out our new homemade fish attractor. In the Jumentos, we'd met George on Windwalker, who showed off pictures of huge mahi-mahi and tuna he'd caught trolling. When we oohed and ahed and asked him what his secret was, he pulled out a plastic cylinder covered with mirrors. He drags it a few boat-lengths behind, and apparently the flashes from it get the fish perked up and interested enough to chomp on the first thing which goes by afterward -- which is his hook. So, while we were boat-bound in George Town, Britt fabricated a fish attractor made out of a few pieces of white polyboard with two CD-ROMs tacked on. It looks totally cool behind the boat; it dives and jumps and "swims" this way and that, and glitters in the sun. The big test, though, is whether the fish think it's totally cool, too, and the jury's still out on that. We only caught one tiny barracuda, but we were never really in the deep water where the big pelagic fish hang out, and 3 knots isn't really a good trolling speed. Fortunately, Severn Star caught a big mutton snapper, which we grilled and shared for dinner that night at anchor in Thompson Bay.
The next morning we called the Thompson Bay Inn on VHF and arranged for a rental car to share with Sara and Kevin. It would be ready by noon, for a noon-to-noon rental period, so we made reservations for lunch. Eating out is a little weird in the Bahamas. When you call in to make a reservation (which is required practically everywhere), you place your order at the same time. The meal turned out to be great. Tryphena, who runs the inn, served us thyme-scented fried pork chops and cracked conch, along with a big platter of french fries, onion rings, cole slaw, and carrot and celery sticks. When she overheard us debating the merits of fried food, she pointed to some photographs on the wall. "That was me fifteen years ago," she said, indicating a rather fat woman dressed in white. "I lost a hundred forty pounds. Fifty of us on the island went on a diet. Together we lost so much weight, whole island come up two feet!" Tryphena now is a slim woman who obviously doesn't eat the hearty fried meals she cooks up for customers.
Our car was a Chevrolet Celebrity that had seen better days. We drove down the Queen's Highway, stopping to poke through the ruins of St. Mary's Church, said to have been built by the Spaniards. (Long Island is one of the places Christopher Columbus discovered on his first voyage.) The small towns along the Queen's Highway don't really have anything to see other than the churches. Many of them were built or rebuilt in the early 1900's by Father Jerome, a noted architect who became first an Anglican priest, then a Catholic one. He spent many years in the Bahamas on Long Island and Cat Island. In Clarence Town, the furthest south we went on our drive, both the Anglican St. Paul's and the Catholic St. Peter's were built by Father Jerome. Both churches have a stocky, whitewashed simplicity reminiscent of New Mexico.
What we'd really come for were the caves. Like all of the Bahamian islands, Long Island is formed from limestone, which erodes easily and makes for great cave land. Just south of Thompson Bay is a huge cave complex. The first several chambers had holes in the ceiling, letting in light and the long root systems of the trees above. Further back -- we had brought flashlights so we could explore -- the surprisingly high ceilings of the many rooms were arched and vaulted, dripping with stalactites and flowstone curtains. Water droplets glistened on rock points, indicating the cave was still "living", still growing. Bats perched in alcoves and flew around our heads. (There are 13 native species of non-aquatic mammals in the Bahamas. 12 of them are bats.)
As spectactular as this cave was, we found an even better one underwater. The Turtle Cove blue hole is on the east coast of Long Island north of Clarence Town, and our exploratory snorkel convinced us to come back the following morning with our SCUBA gear. This blue hole is much smaller in diameter than the one we dove in the Jumentos, but it's much deeper. At 660', it's the world's largest known blue hole, and the eighth largest underwater cavern. Above the water, it's bounded on one side by cliffs and caverns and the other by beach, with only a neck of shallow water connecting it to the Atlantic. Underwater, the beach slopes sharply down like Jabba the Hutt's sand pit in that Star Wars movie, to where it abruptly opens into the deep. Sandfalls pour over the edges of the drop-off as if in slow motion.
Britt
and I went down to 116' quickly, then slowly ascended bit by bit as
we swam around the cavern, staying just this side of the
no-decompression limit. The walls of the hole belled out in a sort of
inverse mountain shape, so although the opening was only a hundred
feet or so across, the chamber below was enormous. The walls were
ledged and covered with strange small growths that resembled the
soda-straw stalagtites in the above-water cave. We noticed a strange
reverse puddle on the underside of one large ledge, where our exhaled
air bubbles had collected and coalesced into a shining mirror of
air.
Not many fish ventured into the depths, but a few curious bar jacks followed us around. Most of the fish hung out on the few coral heads on the sand slopes above the hole, or in a shallow cave where the hole extends under the cliff, which is where we took our 15-foot safety stop. Kevin took several pictures with his underwater camera, so maybe we'll eventually get a few of his photos scanned and on this site.
We wanted to get airfills before heading off to Conception Island, since there's supposed to be great diving there. Severn Star needed diesel, and we'd just finished one of Windom's propane tanks. Sara wanted to phone some family, I wanted to upload some web pages, and both of us needed to do email. The previous day, we had moved to anchor near Simms, which has a Batelco station where we could take car of our communication needs, but the only place we could get our tanks filled was the resort and marina complex of Stella Maris, about 8 miles north. We decided to do the logical thing, and split up along gender lines for the day's errands, rejoining at Calabash Bay near the northern tip of Long Island, which would be a good staging point for the voyage to Conception.
Britt brought our propane and SCUBA tanks over to Severn Star, and he and Kevin took off for Stella Maris while the girls took Windom's dinghy to town. Alas, it was Good Friday, and the Batelco station was closed (which is why these last few uploads are so late!). We found a pay phone, though, so Sara made her calls, and we got back to our boat just before lunchtime.
We lifted the dinghy and I gave Sara a quick lesson in driving Windom, then went forward to raise the anchor for the first time ever. We motored out of Alligator Bay and headed north along the west coast of Long Island. Too bad it was a dead still day -- it would have been such a kick to have sailed! But it was still fun to have a girls' boat, just for the day.
We saw the boys coming out of the marina channel as we were approaching. In our bigger and faster boat, we passed them easily, and led the way to Calabash Bay. This is not an easy anchorage to enter, as it's surrounded by reefs, but we took a conservative route and watched the water closely. I turned the wheel back over to Sara as we approached the anchorage, and dropped the hook (for only the second time ever -- the first being the day before!) in eight feet of crystalline blue water.
I think it was a valuable exercise for both of us. Even though Britt and I have nearly equal sailing experience, I tend to defer to him because he's a better leader, and I trust his judgement when I'm not sure of mine. Being the undisputed captain for the day forced me to make decisions about navigation and procedure, and to just do things rather than asking for support or verification that my intention was the correct thing to do. Sara has much less boating experience than Kevin, and I suspect she tends to let him do everything since he knows what he's doing and can do it easily, so she also got a chance to play a more confident and active role. I used to really enjoy going rock climbing with other women for the same reason; sometimes I was the more experienced partner and sometimes the less experienced one, but in either case it was different from climbing with my vastly more experienced husband. I hope we can swap partners again -- some day when we have enough wind to sail!