Incomparably Beautiful Bahamas!

Were unexpectedly way laid at Sampson Cay due to persistent strong northerly winds. It’s a good time to catch up with our adventures from George Town to this point. The best place to start is the sail from Cave Cay to Black Point.

One of the most pleasant sailing days we’ve had was spent on the scant 10 miles or so on a broad reach from Cave Cay to Black Point. The anchorage was practically deserted, so we sailed right in on the main and chose a perfect spot to drop the anchor. It was Easter Weekend, and it was our un-knowing good fortune to have arrived just in time for Black Point’s Easter Carnival. As the day wore on, the wind died more and more and the sun became intensely hot. We put up the bimini, plunged in the water a couple of times and went to explore the source of a constant dull roar of music and drumbeat.

We discovered the carnival booths in the center of town, offering games of skill, snacks, and cold beverages. The center of town is actually the basketball court of the schoolhouse, which is directly across from Scorpio’s Bar. It was mid-afternoon and most everyone was drinking a cold beer. For just one dollar, I played a game in which one was to stand behind a line and throw needlepoint hoops at a table loaded with prizes. To my great delight, I won a toothbrush which was something I actually needed. The place was teeming with small children with freshly braided holiday hairdos and loud, laughing Bahamian men with a Kalik in hand. Most of the shouting was coming from Scorpio’s so we went in to have a look. There were two main foci of interest; the NBA game on a big-flat screen TV and a game of dominoes happening at one of the tables. If you’ve never seen Bahamians play dominoes, you have missed something. They take turns slapping them down onto the table with a great smacking sound, while loudly discussing their various exploits and the relative ineptitude of their opponents. It is boisterous good fun.

We discovered that there was to be a number of tournaments the next day, including a pool (billiards) tournament and a dominoes tournament. We had hoped to play in the pool tournament, but the entry price was $20.00 per person and a little too steep for a game of pool. Instead we spent a couple of bucks on a couple of beers and had a chat with the guys around the bar. We met one particularly friendly guy named Steve, who claimed to work for JohnnyDepp at his Little Hall’s Pond Cay home. It appears the guy was totally legit. He said it was a great job as most of the time he got to just hang out in a luxurious island mansion with occasional visits from the Depp family. Steve had come over on a very fast boat, intending to spend some time in Black Point, as there was pretty much no other kind of action anywhere in this part of the Exumas on Easter Weekend. We laughed and joked quite a bit until it was time to get a bite to eat of dinner.

Dinner was limited to Jerk Chicken, peas and rice and cole slaw (Wayne selected beets instead…yikes!) as all of the fish had been sold out earlier in the evening. Everything tasted good, and we ate ravenously. Soon afterward, there was a Junkanoo Rush Out by a group from Nassau which proved to be the highlight of the evening. Moms, dads, grandmas, kids of all ages, black and (the few) white people were all soon dancing to the Bahamian beat and admiring the colorful costumes. Although I never managed to drink more than one beer, Wayne had one more and our evening ended up with a bit of sweaty dancing followed by a hasty retreat.

The next day I awoke to a gastric system in turmoil! Although Wayne didn’t feel too wonderful either, my symptoms were inexplicable due to anything other than the previous night’s meal which had basically sat around all afternoon with neither refrigeration nor heat being applied. Yes, the nurse in me knows that if you leave rice out all day, it is an excellent substrate for various naughty microbes that can wreak havoc upon the digestive system. Ah well. Fortunately the anchorage was as still as could be and we did not much more than swim around a bit and wait to feel better. A stash of canned Progresso chicken soup saved me from total starvation/dehydration, but I could not muster up the energy to go anywhere or do anything. Wayne rallied, however, and attended an evening outdoor rock concert that featured a well-known Christian rock singer. I enjoyed the music from the boat until I fell blissfully asleep. Wayne had a great time and the unique honor of being the only white person at the concert! (We are particularly proud to be able to talk about our current President and to say we worked to get him elected and are great supporters. The Bahamians love Obama as do we, and we are no longer embarrassed to say we are Americans. The “W” years were quite different in this regard.)

The next day was had a fine little wind to sail to Staniel – another 10 or so miles from Black Point. Big Majors Spot anchorage was full of immense motor yachts and catamarans, and one particularly enormous and beautiful dark and shiny mono-hull named Tenacious, whose mighty mast was visible for miles. We pulled in behind the fabulous giant 100+ foot long sloop and threw out the anchor. If you would like to see some incredible pictures, you can go to Charterworld.com and look up this boat. She is a 35-meter Triton sloop designed by Ted Hood and boasts, among other accessories, her own seaplane for shuttling guests to and fro. Sixty thou a week is all it takes to book the Tenacious. At least we know we were in good company.

Having a few days to spend in the Staniel area, we decided to explore some coral reefs. We found a quiet little area behind Fowl Cay and had a bit of snorkeling fun. The winds turned unfavorable, however, and we considered anchoring behind Fowl Cay instead. The anchorage behind Fowl Cay is only accessible from the banks side via a “VPR” – visual piloting route. This means that if you are unfamiliar with the waters, you must have extremely good skills reading water depth by color and avoiding shoals and coral heads. It can be scary stuff in a stiff wind. So we decided to try to have a happy-hour cocktail at the beautiful Royal Plantation Island resort. You can check this out at: www.royalplantationisland.com

Little did we know, one cannot simply show up there and have a glass of wine at the bar. The chef spied us looking lost, and offered to bring us up to the dining room and put a glass of wine for each of us on his tab (!) He then kindly brought up a number of promotional brochures and explained that, should we like to reserve for another day, we could have dinner and drinks for $100 per person. We managed NOT to choke upon the wine at that moment and give this option a real thought. You really have to visit the website to see how appealing this was, despite the steep price. We reserved for two nights hence and dinghied back to Cassiopeia, who looked phenomenally small in the shadow of Tenacious. In fact, it always looked like we were anchored far, far away from Tenacious, until we were right upon her. Our diminutive size coupled with not only the physical aspects of perspective but also profound unfamiliarity with a sloop of that size played tricks upon our minds. Still, she was a pretty sight to see just off our port bow!

Regrettably, the anchorage became so rough that we both suffered un peu de mal de mer or ocean-sick tummies. This resulted in more consulting of the charts to see where in the world we could tuck in. That morning I convinced Wayne to take the dinghy over to Sampson Cay, where there was a little marina that seemed very possible. We both found it to be charming and therefore sacrificed the elegant dinner at Fowl Cay for a slip at Sampson Cay. That’s the next story.