The wind howled almost every day that we spent in Fresh Creek, whipping up the ocean into a white froth, smashing waves onto the fringing reef. But the anchorage was around the corner from the ocean entrance, protected by the bulk of the Chickcharnie Hotel, and we were tied in with a tight spiderweb of ground tackle. Ch'i, the boat we were rafted with, had two anchors off the bow and a stern line to a sunken engine-block mooring, and we had a good anchor of the bow as well.
Fresh Creek is a small place, scattered on both sides of a very narrow bridge which crosses the very wide tidal "creek". The Lighthouse "Yacht Club" (actually, a government-run marina and hotel complex) occupies the south bank: pretty pink buildings, coconut palms, a restaurant, a swimming pool, and a few bored, unhelpful employees. There might have been a few guests at the hotel, but mostly the only people wandering around were cruisers, who collected fallen coconuts and washed clothes in the free laundry machines. On the other bank was the mailboat dock and a power generating plant, and beyond them the school and government buildings, and the stores, bars, and houses that made up the town.
Only
a half-dozen or so cruising boats were in Fresh Creek. Two boats had
been in the anchorage for over a month, and another had been there
for most of the last ten years. The atmosphere was at the same time
social and protective; a sort of smug complicity, the feeling of,
"Here we are in our secret hideaway, while the vast masses throng the
Exumas and the Abacos." Yet should any of the vast masses stumble
upon Fresh Creek (as we did) they are welcomed into the "community".
We were invited for potluck dinners, alerted when a local farmer came
by with a truckful of fresh produce to sell, given directions to the
nearest good snorkeling reef. It didn't take long before we were
settled in.
Our first task was to get the watermaker going again, since we were down to our last 40 gallons. Recommissioning the watermaker took much longer than we expected; the leaky part we sent back this summer to be replaced was all better, but we'd sprung new leaks in different places, and the accumulator's air bladder had a hole in it. Some serious anti-leak sealant took care of the drips, and since the accumulator is not a critical part, we'll make do without until George Town, when our mail shipment will include a new air bladder courtesy of the watermaker manufacturer.
Then there was the matter of the wind generator. On the way in, we'd gotten one of our fishing lines caught in the blades, and it had wrapped around between the blades and the motor, stopping the wind generator cold. Britt picked a few dozen little pieces of fishing line out with needlenose pliers, but when we started it up again we weren't seeing the kind of amps we used to, so we disassembled the thing to find out why. Anyway, the manual recommends annual service, and we've had it for just over a year, so it was time. Britt cleaned the brushes and fixed a slight hub misalignment; maybe the fishing line was to blame, maybe not, but things seem to be working properly now.
Chores done, it was time to have fun, so we hauled out the bicycles for a ride to Captain Bill's Blue Hole. After assembling our bikes on the mailboat dock, we headed north on the Queen's Highway through one tiny Bahamian town after another. "Town" is a generous term; they consisted only of scattered pastel-painted houses, perhaps a bar or a church, but each community had a big sign along the road, proudly proclaiming the town's name and motto to all passers-by. We rode through Calabash Bay ("We welcome you with open hands"), Small Hope ("Where there's a will, there's a way") and Davis Creek ("Love can accomplish great things") before turning off onto an unpaved road which was little more than a doubletrack across the limestone.
The road led through a pine forest, and if I squinted a bit I could almost convince myself that the limestone was granite, and that we were on a high mountain jeep road above our old home in Boulder. But Colorado air never gets anywhere near as humid as it is in Andros. Andros is the largest Bahamian island, and in addition to being surrounded by ocean, it has many freshwater "blue holes", like the one we were headed for. The land heats in the sun and the water evaporates, making Andros a steamy, cloudy place, generating its own jungle weather while the smaller islands remain dry.
The
blue hole we had come to visit was a marvel. A quarter-mile across,
nearly perfectly round, we learned later that it was just over a
hundred feet deep. The clear, clean water sparkled in the sunlight,
and that was all the invitation we needed. A wooden platform had been
built near the path, with a rope ladder leading down the rough
limestone cliff to the water. Nobody else was there. We shucked our
clothes, grabbed our masks and snorkels, and splashed in.
The water tasted fresh, and the temperature was perfect for a leisurely circumnavigation. Every so often we'd dive down to investigate a ledge or a cavern or a drop-off, then rise slowly on our backs, watching the strange world of trees and sky approach and then pop into focus as we surfaced. A few tiny fish, none bigger than a few inches long, swam along the edges. We stayed along the edges, too; I took a few strokes out toward the center, to where I could no longer see edge or bottom, but I was immediately overwhelmed with the feeling of being suspended over a dangerous void (which might suck me down, or out of which some monster might appear), and I quickly swam back toward the cliff. We climbed back out and air-dried in the sun, then rode home.
The wind slacked off, fortuitously, about the same time we finished the last bit of the mahi we'd caught on the way in. We dinghied out to the reef with our fish-hunting gear and found a good spot, but we'd no sooner gotten in the water than a boatload of tourists descended upon the exact same spot. Out on a daytrip from one of the nearby resorts, they were there to look at the pretty fish. With our spears and knives we felt like loggers at a Sierra Club picnic, so we slunk back to the dinghy and zoomed off to find another reef. Nothing looked too promising, but after a short while we noticed the tourist boat had left, so back we went.
Britt had his pole spear, while I had my new Hawaiian sling. While we were back in Colorado in October, Britt made it for me out of an old axe handle, with spears made from stainless steel bar stock, sharpened to razor points. It's a lethal weapon -- or would be, in the hands of someone far more expert. I stalked a grouper, which taunted me by dashing out from its hole only when I didn't have the spear cocked; took a "gimme" shot at a lobster which had actually crawled out in the open, only to have my spear bounce harmlessly off because I hadn't cocked the spear far back enough; and carefully snuck up on a large fish which was hovering under an elkhorn coral, only to discover, when I rounded the coral, that I had actually snuck up on a sea fan which was waving back and forth in a very good imitation of a fish's tail.
Meanwhile, Britt speared three fish.
I was getting miffed. "Please," I prayed to Neptune, "I just want to get one fish. Any edible fish. Big, small, I don't care. Just give me a fish."
I swam over to where Britt was having good luck. There were huge schools of fish everywhere, grunts and snappers of all sorts, plus lots of damselfish and other pretty but nonedible fish. "Just shoot into one of these schools," Britt said. "You'll probably hit something."
Yeah, right. I took aim anyway, at a mahogany snapper in the middle of a small group swimming around a branched coral, and let fly. The spear caught that snapper right behind the gills, and I don't know who was more surprised, me or the fish. Britt had already caught another fish and was heading back to the dinghy with it, so I swam behind him with my prize and tried to look nonchalant as I flopped it into the bucket next to his. He obliged me by looking suitably impressed.
By the time the first shark appeared, signalling the end of our hunting spree, we'd collected six fish. That is, Britt had speared five fish, and I had one. But I'm gonna get better, I just know it. Watch out, fishies.