Operation Go Great Inagua!

An other-worldly landscape; doesn't it deserve some attention?

After an eight-day visit to Great Inagua, I've become a booster. If Great Inagua had a facebook page, I'd "like" it. It ticks me off, that this, the third largest and most southern of all the scad-zillions of Bahamian islands - this majestic and beautiful place - has been so overlooked. Hence the need for Operation: Go Great Inagua (or OGGI).


I've already completed OGGI Phase One, by reaching out to my fellow cruisers. The most common Bahamas cruising guides give hardly a mention to this far-off edge of the island nation, so I started a thread on the Cruisers Forum, "Go to Great Inagua!" And since specifics were lacking or out-of-date, I created a Google Map and wrote a detailed report for Noonsite, the reference site for cruisers.

An Enquiry in to the Betterness of the Bahamas

Dear readers,

My original intent for this post was to offer you my insights on The Bahamas, it's people, it's land, and so forth. It was, in fact, to have been the first in an ongoing series of exposes into the culturally inscribed DNA of the citizenry of the various countries into which we temporarily ensconce ourselves. To that end, I had been collecting some choice phrases with which to add a certain journalistic flair to my reflections, phrases such as, "Behind the rugged backdrop of (appropriate land formation to have been inserted here), a (flattering character trait here) people..." or, "Undaunted by a legacy of (hardship or uncertainty or colonialism, etc., etc.) the Bahamian people look ever (something)ly toward the future.

Strictly on a Need to Know Basis

We are here in Great Inagua, the southernmost island in the Bahamas chain.  It's a 215 nautical mile trip from George Town, Exumas, our last port of call, on a direct route. It can be considerably longer (413 in our case) if the tradewinds are against you, which they guaranteeably are at this time of year.

Like most cruising crews, we've developed a hierarchy of policies concerning passage making. They are predicated on the relative probability of events occurring to us and the consequences thereof.  Our default policy is to sail, rather than motor, regardless of wind direction because we are, after all, on a sailboat. However, this policy can be and is superseded by a number of factors.  Time of year is one.  We're in what is known as the "hurricane box," a set of longitudes and latitudes that is especially prone to hurricane activity in the months of June through November.  Hurricanes are not nice to boats generally and our insurance company, who isn't in the business of being nice to boaters doubles our deductible for any damage caused by a named storm, let alone a hurricane.  So our default policy gets supplanted by Amendment #3: Unless It Is Hurricane Season.  (Amendment #1: Unless There Is No Wind, is the default amendment to our default policy.  Regardless of what season it is, if there is so little wind that we lose steerage when under sail alone, we fire up the engines.)

A Day (or so) in the Life of a Dream

8:10 A.M.*: Anchors Aweigh

In our usual places, Jane at the helm, me at the anchor locker. I call for bumps forward to pull JOY up closer to her chain, and periodically a bump to starboard or to port, to lessen the strain on the windlass. Jane senses almost immediately that she got no maneuverability on the starboard side. She shouts out the problem to me and goes to see if there's any prop wash coming from under the starboard hull, but we both know what has happened.


8:32 A.M.: See Jane Snorkel
No early start for us today, yet we've been extremely lucky in the misfortunes of our prop. All three times it has fallen off before this, we've been able to retrieve it. Knowing that it was on when we anchored here, we expect we will find it somewhere within the arc that matches the swing of our boat. We also expect to find the nut that holds it in place. Owing to its size and buryability in the sand, I am less optimistic about the bolt.

...and Nearly Nary a Drop to Drink

There's a story told of a man who lives in a small house with his large family. Things, as you might imagine, are pretty crowded. But he loves his family, of course, so he takes it all in stride.

One day, his wife announces that her parents will be moving in with them indefinitely. Well, if he had been feeling crowded before, now he's climbing the walls. In desperation, he goes to see his rabbi.

"Rabbi," he says "I don't know what to do. My home, as you know, is pretty small and I've been blessed with a large family. Things are pretty crowded, but I love my family, so I try to take it in stride. My in-laws moved in with us recently and now we are bursting at the seams. I never have a moment to myself. We yell and curse one another from morning to night. I'm about to lose my mind. I love my wife, but I don't think I can take her parents living with us much longer. Rabbi, what should I do?"

The Art of Slow Sailing

As we made our way from Great Harbour Cay to Bimini, and from Bimini to Key West, we had some Light Winds.  Also, some No Wind.  Ean has been playing a new game.  Let's call it How Long, and here's what one round looks like.  First he looks on the chartplotter to find out our SOG, or speed over ground, and then he uses the "ruler" function to measure distance.  Next, some quick mental calculations.   He says, "At our current speed, it will take us 122 hours to get to Key West."  Then he starts wondering how long our water will hold out.  Will we run out of food?  "You know, this isn't even normal walking speed," he reminds me.  "This is wandering-through-an-art-museum speed."   Gazing toward land, he asks if I will dinghy him ashore, so he can walk down Key Largo.   "Then," he explains, "you can pick me up at the end of the key, and oh by the way I'll have plenty of time to stop for lunch.  I'll bring you something!"

We have been practicing the Art of Slow Sailing.

What Would Bimini Be?

Alice Town, North Bimini, Bahamas

Sunday morning.

We're sitting at a table against the far wall of Capt. Bob's restaurant.  If this were a New York deli its wall space would be plastered with autographed headshots of celebrities.  Here it is given over to the local corollary: sport fishermen displaying their catch.  Capt. Bob's is reputed by our guidebook to have the best breakfast in Bimini and true enough, the place is nearly full when we walk in.  We are, I notice, the only customers to arrive as a duo.  Seated at the other tables are groups of all men, all dressed in the uniform of sportfishermen: white, long sleeve Ts, commemorating some previous sport fishing event,  cargo shorts, flip-flops and randomly-logoed ball caps (the cruiser uniform is nearly identical differing only in that the ball cap is usually replaced by a visor and the  well-washed T-shirt invariably advertises some Caribbean locale).

Drifting to Bimini

Thursday 

JOY on the glassy sea

Flat calm today.  The moist airs are balanced with the dry airs, the cold airs are balanced with the warm.  No wind.  No sailing.  No point  in hoisting the sails even; we could just weigh anchor and drift to Bimini--or somewhere else depending on the current.  But we have enough water for another day or two (and room for more garbage than that), so we aren't in a huge hurry to get back to the States.  All the more time to play on the little pocket beach by our anchorage.

But first, a bit about yesterday…

Making Our Way from TC to Great Harbour Cay

We left TC on Sunday, March 25, with two items left on our Abaco must-do list. 1. Guana: Partake of the world-famous Sunday pig roast at Nippers; and 2. Man-O-War: Pick up our sail from Jay, who was patching a small tear. (We need a sewing machine, we've decided.)

The wind was what they call "fresh" (when they don't want to say "damn it's windy"). We put a reef in the mainsail before we even got underway, which seemed prudent: we could see whitecaps even in the canal. We were also flying our baby jib (100%), since the big genoa was off getting some love from Jay. The wind was blowing hard from the southwest, and even with the greatly reduced sail area, we flew to Great Guana Cay averaging over eight knots. A great sail, and we were feeling quite competent - it was like we actually knew what we were doing, ya know what I mean?

And the winner is...

Apparently, it was Oscar night earlier this week (I think it was this week).  A movie that we haven't seen--and I'm told no one's heard--won best picture.  Of the other nominees, the only one we have seen or even heard about was "Moneyball" and we have no idea who was nominated for any of the other categories.  Not counting the golf cart drive in in Treasure Cay, there are no movie theaters on Abaco.  I do miss going to the movies.  Then again, I'd miss going to the movies if we were still in Milwaukee because other than emergency grocery shopping, we wouldn't leave the house until spring. (And, no, I don't care how supposedly bizarrely warm this winter has been--we're chilly even here sometimes.)

We have, however, been keeping ourselves amused with a "best of" competition of our own devising, namely house speciality rum punch drinks.  Concocted from a secret recipe of the same five or six ingredients, rum punch drinks are the signature libation of all establishments that cater to visitors.  The best ones completely camouflage the taste of rum with tropical fruit flavors so that drinking several dozen at a time seems perfectly reasonable, the more so the more one has had.  This visit, the nominees were:

Hard at work sampling one of the nominees.

Bilge Burner, The Jib Room, Marsh Harbour
Tipsy Turtle, Green Turtle Yacht Club, Green Turtle Cay
Tail Curler, Curly Tails Restaurant and Bar, Marsh Harbour
Guana Grabber (blended and frozen), Great Guana Cay
Tranquil Turtle, Bluff House, Green Turtle Cay
Mango Millenium, Mangoes, Marsh Harbour
Blaster, Pete's Pub, Little Harbour
Nipper, Nipper's, Great Guana Cay

Another Day in Paradise

We've been here for two and a half months, now and our lives are surprisingly settled (or maybe not so surprisingly).  In some ways life on a boat isn't much different from life on land on a day-to-day basis.  Instead of mowing the lawn, I grease winches; rather than change the oil in the car, I change it in our diesel engines.  Yes, it's true that we didn't have to think about our energy or water consumption back at the house (though we should have) and didn't have to worry about fetching our prop out of the canal (a stroke of luck, that one) or Percy out of the canal (do they EVER learn?), but we also don't have to think about shoveling snow, or snow even as an abstract concept and whenever it happens that we're not so keen on our neighbors, we can relocate in less than 15 minutes.  A more than fair trade off, I'd say.  Thanks to iTunes, we can even keep up with our favorite TV shows, not to mention find new ones--when we have an Internet connection, that is.  Someday, some $15000 from now (plus monthly charges), we'll be able to be online whenever we want.  For now, it's catch as catch can.  For instance, just now, I'm sitting at the local watering hole, which isn't open, or rather, isn't serving (it's an open air bar, so it's always "open"), but has wi-fi, and thanks to our having stayed at the marina when we first came to Treasure Cay, we know the password... until they change it.

We did finally make it Green Turtle Club to toast "the idea" with Tipsy Turtles as a provocative hour. We'd actually accidentally gone to a Valentine's Day dinner at different marina on the same island the night before.  I wanted to walk around the harbor to get a little exercise, but Jane felt that it didn't count if we didn't dinghy over, so we did.  She dinghyed back; I walked (those Tipsy Turtles are chock full o' calories).  On the way back I ran into Phil and Sally and Karin and Klitzer--fun to run into folks you know.

Last weekend, T-Cay (as it is it known to many of the residents), held a marine flea-market and because I've stared uncomprehendingly at all of the 3,127 spare parts on JOY, I though it was time to look at some new unidentifiable objects.  We were also hoping to get a larger anchor, as ours is a little undersized.  No luck on the anchor, but we were pleasantly surprised at how many of the items' identities we did have a guess about.  No need to buy anything, we decided as we're already overwhelmed by the prospect of deciding which unidentifiable items in our own inventory to keep, space being at more of a premium all the time.  We have provisionally settled on three organizational categories.  Not because three suffices better than any other number, but because we (and when I say "we" I mean I), can't keep more than three consistently separate.  The categories are: 1) "Know What it is and Know We'll Need it at Some Point"  2) Don't Know What it is, but it's Heavy and Therefore Probably Expensive to Replace" and 3) "It's so Small, it Can't Possibly Be All that Useful and/or Expensive."  Of course, it would seem to make sense to keep the small parts just cause they don't take up that much room, whereas the bigger parts do, all else being equal (such as our equal ignorance of their functions).  We may have to rethink our categories.

Our friends, Michel and Danielle on Gatito are back for a few weeks.  It's good to see them again.  We'll actually be leaving before Michel this time to return to the States for a major refit.  And then, parts south.  We're looking forward to moving on, much as we love it here.

Pete's 18th Annual 50th Birthday Party: A Pilgrimage of Sorts

We have sailed to Little Harbour to attend a party in honor of Peter Johnston's 50th birthday.  We have never met Pete, as far as we know, and it's not really his 50th birthday and the whole affair is just an excuse to raise funds for a charitable organization known as "Every Child Counts."   ECC is a philanthropic organization which, without benefit of governmental funding, seeks to provide educational opportunities for children with developmental disabilities.  Pete's "birthday" is one of several annual fundraisers they hold.

We're that much more happy to attend the party knowing that the proceeds are going for a worthy cause, but it is not really the reason we're going.  We first discovered Pete's Pub in the summer of 2008.  We'd decided to rent a car and drive the length of Abaco just to see what there was to see.  Pete's Pub and Gallery was listed in the guidebooks and online as a not-to-be-missed stop and so, we didn't.  At the time, vehicular access to Pete's Pub seemed recent.  Something about the 2+ mile extension cord which T'd off the main highway and provided electricity to the pub, gallery and the rest of the Little Harbour community.

How to Buy a Sailor's Knot Bracelet

If you've ever wondered how to find that quintessential accessory donned by all style-conscious sailors, worry not.  One of the many perks of living the life aquatic is the veritable wealth of fashion advice for all things nautical that one acquires without even trying.  

The sailor's knot bracelet, indeed basic to the accoutrement of any salty dog is steeped in maritime history.  These were not only items of practicality as one could use them to wipe the sweat from one's brow whilst swabbing the deck, but attested to the knot tying prowess of their owner.

These days, of course, the preferred way to obtain your own seafaring fashion statement is to purchase one and in my never-ending quest for such necessities, I have discovered several ways of going about it.  

Wine Down and Sip Sip

Our second favorite cay (or maybe first in a different category), is Elbow Cay, specifically Hope Town, the commercial district of Elbow Cay.  It's cozy, yet bustling, old yet always new.  It's one of those singular places, places where you find townfolk who like to play with their town.  It's got in spades what I call "ititude."  Ititude is that hallmark ethos of places that are cool and know it.  Hope Town is cool and knows it.  It's not pompous, it doesn't have to be--that's part of ititude.

Bay St., Hope Town

We're in a lounge from which the title of this post gets its name.  We've come here, in addition to getting internet access, to experience what I was told by Andrew, our electrician in Marsh Harbour, is the perfect martini, available in all of the Abacos, only here.  Andrew strikes me as a man who knows the perfect martini when he drinks it.  So, here we are.  Only problem is Bonnie, the owner (I think), is not on site when I make my request.  So, Simone, our bartender, calls around town to track her down because she knows she can't do "the perfect martini" justice.

Several minutes later, Bonnie does indeed arrive.  "Where did you hear that we have the best martini in all of the Abacos," she wants to know.

"From Andrew the electrician" I reply.

"I've made Andrew several martinis," she says.

"I'll have what he's been having."

Our time, prior to Bonnie's arrival has not been wasted, entertainmentwise.  We apparently walked in on the lounge's Wednesday afternoon aerobics class: several middle-aged white ladies, not sure of their nationality, sweatin' to the oldies. We were invited by Simone to join them.  "As soon as I've had enough drinks to see a disco ball, I'm there," I said.

Oh, and about that martini...  I hate, hate hate, winter, I tell Simone.  "But if I liked it, it would taste like this."

Our water heater is still cobbled together and we have to remember to turn off the fresh water pump whenever we're not using it so that it doesn't pump out all of our water into the Sea of Abaco.  We've determined that we need to start over completely with both our refrigeration and electrical system.  Both of which (along with a permanent fix for the water heater) and a new bimini will be taken care of in March when we return to the States for a refit.  Meanwhile, we've decided to just hobble along as best we can, tragic as that is, ameliorating our stress with liberal doses of goddess Bonnie's perfect martinis, sunshine, and ititude.

Gas delivery day

Yet more miles of pristine beach, ho hum

Poof! We're Interesting

Our aforementioned inverter/battery charger issue plus some Official Paperwork plus the need to do some provisioning added up to a trip to Marsh Harbour, our first successful landing since arriving in the Bahamas.  As is the norm in these parts, the boatyard didn't have its own electrician but had the name of one and the Marsh Harbour Marina let us park at one of their docks gratis for the couple of hours said electrician would need to look over our ailing piece of equipment.

I stayed onboard as per our agreement (if I can't fix it myself--which is still almost always--I am obliged to peek over the shoulder of the technician who can); Jane went off in the dinghy to run some errands.  Provisioning (okay, fine, shopping) would come after the electrician was done and after we'd showed the marina our appreciation by having lunch and drinks at its restaurant.

The Best Laid Plans

"Sometimes," to misquote a line from an episode of the new ABC drama, Pan Am, "the stars misalign."  I should have known our mission was doomed to fail when, on the day before our pilgrimage, the dinghy outboard konked out.

Land Ho, Ho, Ho!

JOY proudly flies her Bahamian courtesy flag

Two pieces of cloth have forced wind to move us 467 miles over an ocean.  How is that even possible?  Fairly easy to understand; impossibly difficult to comprehend.  Days (3 of them) of nothing but water and sky, nights of water and starlight and not another ship in sight.

We make our way, aiming at a microscopic point on the face of the earth, trusting our instruments to "see" where we are in this featureless world and to point JOY where we want to go.

Jane is in her element, her reflexes honed to supple precision; I am dumb with awe, dimly able at best to assess situations in real time.  Jane periodically records Things of Significance in her iPad; I ponder continually and unsuccessfully how to relate this voyage, this event without resorting to hackneyed metaphors, unsure of whether there is anything to say at all since nothing is going wrong, but knowing that to describe it as "perfect" is to do it an injustice and to make for a short and boring tale.  All I can say is that we set our sights on making it back for the one year anniversary of this amazing, insane, life changing idea and wonder of wonders, we have!  I think if it and weep with disbelief and, yes, joy.

Beyond that, I give, I resign.  I try, but I can't.  I can't differentiate context from content, can't distinguish between the story and its events, the forest and the trees (for you hackneyed metaphor buffs).  This is not my tale to tell, clearly.  Jane?  This one's all you.  Take it away.

We are SO here!

Lots and lots to say very soon, but just a quick note to announce that we arrived in Treasure Cay, Abaco, Bahamas at 11:34 Tuesday morning. All are fine. Much JOY right here.

The Power of Yes

Just a couple of things to add to Ean's update.  I'd like to offer a public apology and thank you to René and Steve, former owners of Joy, who have been so patient with us.  They are keeping track of our progress (or lack thereof), and they are surely worried that we’re going to kill their boat.  But we continue to learn from them.  It was René who suggested that if we were stocking up on meat, we should ask the butcher to FREEZE the meat for us, so we don’t tax our reefer.  At the Piggly Wiggly from Port Royal, SC, we put her advice into action.  Now, first, I have to admit that we, as urban dwellers, have always viewed the presence of a Piggly Wiggly as a sign of the end of civilization.  But shame on us.  Paul from Piggly Wiggly was AWESOME.  He agreed to freeze the meat, introduced us to his accommodating manager, and picked out the best cuts of meat to put into our box o’ meat.  It is SO easy to say NO, and often times, people enjoy exercising the power of NO.  Paul could have easily said, “No, sorry, we can’t do that.”  But the people who use their power to say YES are so inspirational to me.  Paul said, “This is what we do at the Piggly Wiggly.  It’s all about customer service.”  How cool is that?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE Paul.  Paul is why life is worth living. 

Thar She Blows!

Jed (left) and Craig of EMD Fuels

Ok, only about 200 feet or so, but, hey, it's something.  We moved from our dockage at the end of the pier to the prime real estate by the boardwalk, spots usually reserved for boats that go for way north of seven figures.  It's actually only so that Craig and Jed, the mechanics healing our boo-bood engines, can have easier access to them.  But we're closer to the bathrooms for which we are grateful.  If all goes well,  we might be underway once again by early afternoon tomorrow...yeah, what are the odds?

We spent part of the weekend in Savannah (and the rest of it driving to and from Savannah).  To give you a sense of how slowly boats go, Savannah is roughly 400 miles south of Beaufort, NC which is 6 hours by car or 8 days by boat (albeit 8 sun up to sundown days, not 8 24-hour days).