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After Marantha left us, we had that big storm she was hoping to see. It blew about fifty miles per hour and had a heavy downpour along with it. Remember to click on any picture and it will become enlarged.
Our new friends, Patrick and Alaina and Pat and Jen, were headed to Grand Cay, the northwestern most island of the Abacos, so we followed. It was good sailing weather and they smoked us.
Grand Cay was super rocky everywhere. The town seems pretty isolated. They have their own distinct style of stucco. It was everywhere on this island. Half the businesses on the island seem to be owned by a big man named Rosie.
We snorkeled at Double Breasted Cays and chased spotted eagle rays down in the dingy. There were lots of flats to explore. I saw a few nurse sharks and watched Pat fly fish for bonefish.
Pat and Jen generously shared the fish that he caught along the way. We all took turns cooking for each other. It was wonderful to have all that variety of good food. We had been eating the same four or five meals over and over again for a couple of weeks. We found a cute little all natural private beach. The house was boarded until season. They must have owned the whole island. We scraped the beard off the dingy and ran Pat and Jen's dogs. Patrick climbed a tree and got some coconuts.
Here is a common sight. A couple Bahamians gathering conch in a skiff. They pulled up to a bank and began pulling the conchs out of the shell. When they are done, there will be a large pile of shells on the bank.
We parted ways with the others after Grand Cay. They were headed back to the States. After two days of traveling SE along the island chain, we were at Green Turtle Cay. This is the beginning of the area settled by British Loyalists during the American Revolution. Most the businesses in the "Hub of the Abacos" seem to owned by American expats. They know how to cater to the tastes of the tourist.
Check out this Chevy Van. It is the size of a golf cart. I'm sure it doesn't pass crash tests in America, but everyone in Carrboro woud be driving it if they had the freedom to buy it. You can't tell me there's not an American market for these cars. The Bahamas are lucky to have this option, however, I was speaking with a Bahamian about my age at the fuel dock who told me that they are not allowed to install solar or wind turbines on their homes. All of there power in created by diesel power plants. You see them everywhere in the Bahamas. Usually you see a big plume of smoke blowing off the island. It really stinks and kinda makes you feel sick. It just goes to show you you that even a country that did sign the Kyoto Accords, as the Bahamas did, still has a long way to go. It's not like these cars are electric either. They just use less gas and probably don't come with a catalytic converter.
Below, is Great Gauna Cay. This was my personal favorite. Hardly any businesses. Just a few restaurants. The beach was rated one of National Geographic's ten best beaches in the world. You can snorkel really good reefs right off the beach or go further in a dingy to the barrier reefs where all the big stuff and most of the life is. It is just stunning when you first see it. On the other side of the island, not the beach side, the water is not as brilliant.
Tioga and I went pretty far out to a big reef. It was huge. It was kinda dark because there were not many colors on this reef. It was mostly dark green. There were large caves and caverns. One had a sea turtle hiding from us. Several had groupers. At the base of this 30 foot reef fortress was a big silver snapper. He was just waiting to get get shot. Tioga missed the first time. I was too chicken to shoot it. It still wasn't worried about us. He should have been.
The first day with Tioga, we snorkeled on the reef just off the beach at Great Guana Cay. We weren't expecting much because it was so close to shore. But it was bigger than it looked. Tioga swam way down under a big head and got this shot of a lion fish. It is an invasive species. It kills the other fish. It is very poisonous to the touch. Many divers kill them for this reason, but we were afraid of getting stung in the process.
There was a small uninhabited island near the anchorage at Great Guana Cay. I went to explore it by myself one afternoon. I was trying to get to the higher elevation of the island, but had difficulty because of thickets and poison wood trees. Poison wood is a big pretty tree that is like really bad Poison Ivy if you touch it. I saw a few small caves and went in to get a closer look.
This guy was staring right back at me. He wasn't too worried. I was a little scared he would fly out at me actually.
After a few days in Great Guana Cay, we wanted some different reef, so we sailed to Hope Town a little further down the Abacos chain.
Munchies was the cheapest place to eat in the Bahamas. they had a good burger for $4.50. Usually, everything is $10.00 or more. They had every kind of junk food you wanted. I remember back in Grand Cay, we went to Rosie's restaurant for breakfast. She asked us what we would like to eat and then said all they had was ham, eggs and toast, and we were totally happy with that. We were there for four days and none of the stores had milk the whole time. If they did it would have been ten bucks a gallon.
We saw a wreck on the barrier reef and decided we to dive on it. Piper was too cold, so she waited in the dingy while Tioga and I snorkeled. It was very hard to find a way through the coral to the ocean side where the wreck was. There was a fishing net tangled in the reef. Kinda sad. There was no way to remove it without getting cut up. We found a small shallow cut we could swim over the coral to the deep side. Once we got through, it was about forty feet deep, we made our way over to the wreck and it was super creepy. It seemed to be a relatively new wreck. Usually, wrecks are old with lots of coral growing on them. This had no growth at all. It was all loose steel. The ship was totally smashed up into unrecognizable pieces. There was this dumpster size metal box that was moving around when a big wave came. The steel creaked and whined. I didn't like it one bit. It was scary, but Tioga pretty much makes me do it and I always end up glad I did.
That's not green coral. It's a fishing net.
After about fifteen minutes we were both ready to go. There were no fish there at all and I I just wanted to get back before something crazy happened. All of the sudden a huge wave broke over the top of us. We were right next to all that metal moving around and you couldn't see anything but bubbles for what seemed like two minutes. There is sharp reef towards the beach that you can't swim over, deeper water with bigger fish the other way and twisted metal somewhere next to us. The bubbles cleared up and I started looking around for Tioga. I still couldn't spot him. I was freaking out. He was probably still diving looking for grouper. Finally, I heard him call and we started swimming for the narrow passage through the coral. I looked back and motioned for Tioga to follow me to the cut. He acknowledged. I swam a couple yards and looked back. He was gone again. I thought he had already found the cut and started through, so I started to swim towards coral that was too shallow. Keep in mind that the wave action was pretty big due to 15 mph winds with waves breaking on this barrier reef. I wave came up behind me and washed me up onto the reef in a foot of water. My snorkel and mask fell off and both of my contact lenses fell out. I was on my knees on coral. Waves kept coming in. I couldn't stand up, see above or below the water. I yelled for Piper and Tioga. She saw me and hollered and waved back. She could tell I must have lost my contacts by the way I was groping around. I told her to come pick me up. She pretended she was hauling the anchor but wasn't about to take our inflatable closer to that reef. She just wanted me to feel like help was on the way so I would stop freaking out and get myself off the reef. Tioga was going through the cut the right way. Apparently, he was right behind me wondering why I was going into the shallow coral. He wasn't about to follow. I yelled for him. But he was pretty far away. I had to get my snorkel back on so I could see underwater and find a way through the coral. I got it on and stuck my head under. I could see enough to find a small passage. I had fire coral all around me. It looks like fire and has a light sting to it when grazed. I made it through and swam back to the dingy. I had several small cuts on my ankles and elbows. This is why Piper is the captain, I freak out and make bad decisions. It's kind of a cool story though. I started laughing at it right away, but when it was happening, I actually was thinking I could drown out there.
One day we snorkeled off the beach and were a little disappointed at the clarity of the water. It was just too windy. Everything was all stirred up. Piper wanted to lay on the beach and read a magazine. So we dropped her off and went to the deeper water where there was less sand too get stirred. After about 5 minutes, Tioga speared a huge grouper! We couldn't fit it in a five gallon bucket, so we put it in his dive bag. We had to get it on ice right away. So that was the end of snorkeling that day. It was kinda of sad because we found these towering coral heads that looked like Dr. Suess's worlds.
Grouper under a coral head.
On the last dive before Tioga caught a plane back to the states, we were looking to spear a big fish and catch it on video. I was manning the camera, Tioga the spear and Piper the dink. We swam through a few deep water heads. There were lots of big groupers around. Tioga dove down to spear one. He missed. As I panned upwards to show the size of the reef, I saw a very sharky looking shark. Usually, we just see nurse sharks or baby reef sharks. I freaked out and that clip isn't so great. Of course Tioga wouldn't be worried until a tiger shark was present. And even then, I bet he'd remain perfectly calm. He captured the shark again when it returned. I think the shark knew we were hunting and was just waiting until we got something. He definitely wasn't interested in eating us. But he did want to check us out from a distance. I noticed that every time I started to swim away from it, the shark would slowly follow. And when we just stared back at it, it turned sideways and swam away. He was as big as Tioga. I eventually got the nerve to dive down and take a closer shot as well. But Tioga is very steady handed with a camera under water. This is his third trip snorkeling with us. We were glad he got to see a shark and spear some big fish.
There's no way to describe the massive structures at these reefs. If we had super cameras with wide angle lenses maybe you could tell how big everything is and how colorful the corals can be. The best way is to go there yourself. Having a guide that swims with you takes the edge off. However, I don't know how easy that is to find. We were very lucky to have Tioga. Most snorkeling tours take you to shallow reefs and getting to the big stuff probably has to be requested. All the big stuff has the bigger fish and towering structures. They are usually located where the water starts dropping off into the ocean.
This is our final trip while living aboard Delphine. It's been fun, adventurous and challenging. Some people tell us how jealous they are of us. It's funny because we know how much hard work comes with living on a boat. We aren't sitting in the cockpit drinking Margaritas every night and tanning on the beach all day. We worked like every one else while living in Key West. I wish I could sell my art on the street back home in Chapel Hill without business owners getting ticked off because of a little good old Made In America competition. This whole trip has put a lot into perspective for me. We've been treated as vagrants everywhere we've gone, even in Key West, and I love Key West. They consider everyone living in a boat homeless. It's just a way to get money from the government. They will not allow a "dingy docker" to pay for the "nice" bathrooms because they are reserved for the marina tenants only, but our "rent" is due on the first of each month. They offer a different building that resembles a moldy jailhouse bathroom instead for an additional $72/month. Why can't I pay more for the nice bathrooms? Because everyone who anchors out is a drunk vagrant and they don't want us rubbing elbows with the better clientele. They claim we all just cheat the system and share bathroom keys. We weren't expecting to always get lumped in with the bums by choosing this lifestyle. It doesn't matter how many thousands of dollars you spend in their city, instead of a ticket, they will lock your dingy up so you can't go home that night.
So it is time to stop living vicariously through us. The key to affording this lifestyle is simple living...doing without. Remember that the filthy rich aren't getting the experience you will get. The best things are free. They are sitting on a large boat watching a big screen TV. That's not life. That's just living. They aren't snorkeling with turtles and spearing fish. They are drinking $9 mojitos in an air conditioned room. They aren't lying on a beach with pink sand. (which is kinda over-rated anyway) They are being served fish they didn't catch, clean or cook themselves. We are ready for our next adventure. We are ready to be closer to the family again. I am ready to be a street artist in my own town. You are free to chase your dreams.
