"Being on a boat that's moving through the water, it's so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what's important and what's not." James Taylor
After a quiet night it was uphook and we were outward bound once again, heading north to Guana Cay (not to be confused with guano). Although that was how most of us felt as we headed out of the North Bar Channel into the rolling open ocean on the hunt for wahoo and dorado. The nausea started with an innocuous yawn and crept up into a bilious hell.
"The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen
I don't think there is much cure for sea sickness other than ginger ale belches and the promise of dry land! For all our green-ness, the deeper water proved to be bereft of fish apart from sighting of a couple of flying fish. We turned back towards land and entered through Tilloo Cut into the calmer waters, in the lee of Elbow Cay.
Our next mooring was Pirates Cove on Great Guana Cay. Coasting up between Great Abaco Island and the outer cays made for smooth sailing and by mid afternoon we had taken an endtie on the jetty there. The island is 9 miles long, and the name supposedly comes from Iguana. I didn't see any around and there weren't many people either, but what did I expect with only around 150 souls permanently residing there? After dinner, Billy, Anne and I decided to go ashore to the infamous Nippers. Wandering down the jetty and onto a sandy lane, it only took a couple of minutes to reach the other side of the island. The bar and eatery were deserted except for one owner, one barman, one customer and our skipper, Tony. It took our small group a nano second to turn the evening into a blasting good time...or was that just my cocktail addled perception? I had a feeling we would be staying another evening here in Pirates Cove.
"Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk." Sir Francis Chichester
Being hungover on a boat is not fun, being hungover as a homeschool teacher is worse. I looked and felt like death warmed up.
"There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating." Alfred Hitchcock
As Billy and Anne went for an early morning walk, the bait that Billy left on the line managed to snag a small grey nurse shark while they were gone. Of course the line broke and the shark became another 'one that got away'. Still, not a bad catch for a absentee.
"All fishermen are liars; it's an occupational disease with them like housemaid's knee or editor's ulcers."Beatrice Cook, Till Fish Do Us Part, 1949
After a little light math instruction and a virgin mary, Greg and I took the kids back over to Nippers to check things out in the daylight. It didn't take long to get chatting to the lady in the obligatory souvenir shop. "I got nipped at Nippers" seemed to be the order of the day on most of the t-shirts. Turns out that the dear lady was the proprietoress since she and her husband had decided to buy the properties decades before. The locals had scorned their plans saying there were too many nippers (biting flies) in the location, thus the name. However, with a tradition of Sunday pig roast that had grown into legend over the years, obviously the flies had not won out. I had truly got nipped at Nippers!
We were too exhausted to leave, so decided to spend another night on Guana Cay. To Billy and Josh this meant hunting more fish from the dinghy. They spent an hour trawling outside the harbor but had no luck.
"H2O: two parts Heart and one part Obsession. " Author Unknown
It would seem the obsession for fish continued the next day and we planned another fishing trip offshore. On the way to our happy hunting ground, Tony stopped off at a beautifully deserted beach so we could swim before spending time vomiting.
“Our memories of the ocean will linger on,
long after our footprints in the sand are gone.” Anonymous
I have spent a life time searching out beautiful beaches and finding reasons to hang out there as much as possible. Does that make me a sun seeker or a beach bum? This place has to be in the top ten beach spots in the world.
The brilliant turquoise water rolled onto the white sand. Stretching into the distance either side the beach wedged up to a palm tree fringed shoreline. A deserted paradise. The water visibility was so immaculate I was compelled to jump in and swim ashore. After diving around with the kids and looking for shells I felt the need to wander off and climb up the sand dunes to check if Swiss family Robinson were receiving visitors.
Horror of horrors, as I swished idyllically through the long grass in my bikini, I started to feel the thorns underfoot. By now it was as far to go on as to go back so head down I persevered forward, gritting through the sharp pains emanating from my soles. Abruptly I emerged at the top of the bluff and stood mouth agape in surprise. There, in manicured verdant glory was a golf course complete with 2 greenskeepers riding around on all terrain lawn mowers. This was just the last thorn in paradise. Feeling somewhat underdressed for the country club, I quickly crouched down and looked back out towards the boat. My paradise perfection had been popped by someone else's version of Shangri-La. I deflated back down to my reality among the tall grass and slowly began to pull the burrs from my feet. Pulling those miniscule grass seed needles did give me a chance to sit and observe the boat and our intrepid crew from a distance. Looking from the outside in gave me some introspection to see that nothing is ever perfect, especially me.
"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself." Anna Quindlen
When my dollop of terra firma therapy concluded, I braved the grass spikes once more to return to the inner sanctum of the Leopard 47, neosporin and a good pair of tweezers.
Back aboard and on with the order of the day - fishing. It seemed Mr. Billy was destined to be the master of the red snapper which wasn't quite the thrill of the big gamefish but it certainly made us smile.
Time for a quick stop at the dive shop to hire more fishing rods for the kids and weight belts to help reduce buoyancy while lobster diving....mmmm liking the sound of that.
Friday night and time to pull into Green Turtle Cay for our own brand of fun. With fresh fish and plenty of rum we brought a new brand of piracy to those shores. And oh boy did it feel good to have a hot marina shower. It seemed the spirit of Davy Jones was amongst us as we rummaged out a good portion of rum from his locker.
Saturday morning - after apologizing profusely to our neighbors moored alongside for any raucous and loud behavior from the night before, it was time for a little fun in golf carts. Green Turtle is a large island and we planned to explore down to New Plymouth one of the oldest settlements in the cays. En route we stopped off at Bita Bay for some snorkeling and beach time. This really was summer bliss in January.
The water visibility was excellent and it was easy to see how alive the reef was. Splashing along with Josh I came across a funny looking fish. Kind of elongated with a wide jaw and sort of mottled pattern, I looked at him and he looked at me. He didn't move and neither did I. We just floated in the warm swell, he on the sandy bottom and I on the surface. Puzzled, I had Josh take a look, he made an underwater squeal and took off. He eventually popped up to tell me it was a leopard moray eel and be careful mom they are the most dangerous. Who knew? Apparently my 8 year old son was now part Cousteau. There were probably Lionfish under the shelf of the reef but I didn't go poking around too much. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 is blamed for smashing an aquarium in Florida and introducing Lionfish from the Pacific into the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately they are not a good addition to the Bahamian ecosystem. With venomous dorsal spikes, they are killing off lots of the native fish and have no natural predators.
Back onto the golf carts for a whizz bang tour of New Plymouth which was a weird hodge podge of clapboard houses lining narrow streets. Definately one of the more established communities in the Abacos ,but still only a few people to be seen. Great news, at the small village store, there was homemade chocolate icecream.
I'm really starting to get into this boating lifestyle, rum and ice-cream who could be happier?
“Money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.” David Lee Roth
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