Report #11 – Dec 22, 2013 to Jan 8 2014 – Warderick Wells
Cay to Staniel Cay to Black Point, Great Guana Cay,Exumas, Bahamas
Happy New Year !!!!
We have been in some wonderful places for Christmas and New
Years from the good old favourite – home in Canada – to Arles & D’Avignon
in Provence France, Sienna & Assisi in Tuscany, Dubrovnik & Mostar in Croatia and Bosnia ,
Kardamyli and Monemvasia on the Greek Pelopenese, London & Portsmouth, England and Lisbon & Evora, Portugal in the last 10 years. This year was something entirely
different and entirely delightful.
Christmas this year was in Warderick Wells Cay and our anniversary – Dec
29 – and New Years were spent in Staniel Cay.
Cherry and Ken - Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park staff and warden –
hosted Christmas pot luck dinner on Christmas Day at the Wardens’
residence.
Turkey, chicken and Bahamian
Mac and Cheese (it is really good) and all the cruisers contributions added up
to a feast and a memorable day with food and company to nourish the spirit and
body. The company was great and the
location, well let me put it this way:
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| Taken from the top of my mast - OK pic of pic in brochure, we had ball at elbow |
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| This is Bahamian defence force patrol boat P45 based out of the park |
Our absolute favourite places in the world now includes this
place. Cherry’s grandchildren, Shariff
and Tye had to leave before Christmas to get home to Nassau but we saw them
again before left (boat to Staniel Cay and 6 seater to Nassau.) We spent a wonderful afternoon watching and
joining it a game of beach baseball with these two. The ball was Tye’s tank-top wet and tied up
tightly, the bat a 2foot piece of driftwood, the bases were the boys’
flip-flops and the rules simple: one boy
pitches fields, the other hits and runs.
After hitting the “ball”, the runner tries to get around the bases
without being hit by the other player with the “ball.” Tagging up on a base is fine and the runner
is safe and the fielder has to back off some distance and a bit of
psychological play starts until someone decides to run, throw, slide, tackle
etc. Tye is one determined player with a
heck of an arm. Shariff does not always
win but he is a fantastic big brother and plays with and keeps an eye on his
little brother. Shariff is mad about the
Miami Dolphins and knows all the players and scores. They showed up later one night for the
cruisers get together and Tye lost a flip-flop and very late in the evening we
were walking around looking for it, Tye fighting to stay awake while I carried
him. Grammy – Cherry – found it so it
didn’t get taken by the tide. We gave
the boys a grab bag of stuff including Canadiana stuff, a baseball with Canada
and chocolates. They gave us an
absolutely wonderful and unforgettable day at the beach.
We snorkeled some small coral reefs near emerald rock just
around the corner from the north anchorage and just inside the Cut. The corals are beautiful and varied from the
common types to more exotic and the brain corals. Schools of brightly coloured fish, of all
sizes, swimming back and forth entertained us.
Some of the reefs have mooring balls so getting out and seeing all this
is just so easy. We saw one monster
lobster, at least 3 feet long. We
dinghied around to some remote beaches and had them all to ourselves.
We also saw the Hutias that have been reintroduced - guinea pigs with rat tails that have exploded in population and are pooping all over!
Staniel Cay Yacht Club is the focal point and it is a
thriving family owned business. David and young wife Christine from Equador now
run the business started by David’s parents in the mid-1950s. The business has been expanding and includes
small brightly coloured private cabins on the water, Watermaker Air (small 6
seater that runs between Fort Lauderdale and Staniel Cay -about $540 – and
Nassau etc.), fuel dock, docks for mostly yachts up to maybe 100’, restaurant,
gift and liquor supplies etc. The
population of Staniel Cay is about 100 and the locals come are completely
integrated with the Club. Just beyond
the Club is the Blue and Pink stores and Isles’ General Store (all very busy on
Saturdays after the mailboat has unloaded), the Sea and Plenty bar-restaurant
and the Big Dog bar-restaurant, government office and the church. Everything arrives by the mailboat, here and
all the other cays, small freight boats that come weekly or so.
M/V Captain arrived here and unloaded cinder
blocks, passengers, food, beer, fruits, veg, a car, golf carts and anything
else that was ordered last week. Forget
to order something, no problem, just a 4 hour round run on a cigarette boat if
you need smokes! The locals are just
wonderful and make all welcome. That is
part of what makes Staniel Cay special, that it is a place where the visitors
and the locals mingle and do not stay separate and apart like many big resort
places. The guy sitting on one side of
you may be a local fisherman just in from diving for conch and on the other,
the owner of 80’ motor yacht, all taking about the football game on the screen.
Staniel Cay is also the location of the world-famous
“Thunderball Grotto.” Yes, it is in the
James Bond 1965 movie Thunderball and the underwater scenes were all filmed
here. It is the grotto that Sean Connery
pops up in. We watched 007 in
Thunderball in doing research and preparation for our visit – honest Edi, it
was necessary and that’s why we didn’t watch Eat, Pray, Cry or Fried Green Sobs
which really honestly I watched just last week while you were sleeping... The grotto is snorkel in at low tide or hold
your breath and swim under and in at high tide.
The current can be swift so slack tide low is best but slack high or
drift snorkel anytime for good swimmers.
Regattas are a big deal here and the Bahamians are experts
at racing sloops. Staniel Cay has 2
Class A boats and they race every December 31 with a few local crew and guests
providing the rail meat. The ballast is
bars of lead ingots placed in the bottom of the boats. The captain reads the wind, looks as the
weights of his rail meat and decides how much ballast to put in the bottom –
loose – of his sloop. Three races, Lady
Muriel vs. Tida Wave, boats 16 & 17.
Lady Muriel took 2 of 3 and the winning crews of Lady Muriel’s three
races each got a nice jacket courtesy the Club.
The Club also awarded $2500 to the winning boat and $2000 to the second
place (Tida Wave.) Captain Steve and his
friends have rebuilt these 1950s boats and cares for them and outfits them and
these funds help with all of this. Steve
and his local sailors will be taking Lady M and Tida Wave to George Town for
the big Bahamian Regatta in early April and we hope to be there to cheer them
on.
The cruisers put on an auction to also raise monies for the
sloops and offerings included this great big lobster (crawfish to the
Bahamians, spiny lobsters to us – just the tail gets eaten.) The locals put on a dinner for the auction
donours and participants after ( bonefish, chicken, conch bites, Bahamian Mac ‘n
Cheese, peas and rice, conch salad, cabbage salad – this is real Bahamian fare
and is GREAT!) The Club contributed lots of free booze – beer, rum punch and
all sorts of bottled liquor - including Bailey’s to Edi’s delight.
That night David and Christine had hosted a gathering on the
public beach between SCYC and the Sea and Plenty. They had Chinese lanterns and anyone wishing
to dedicate a lantern for a loved one was welcome to step up. Edi and I have always lit candles at a
Cathedral for our mothers when we are travelling at Christmas time. Surely, our thoughts were carried more
clearly than ever from this place.
On December 31, after the awards for Lady Muriel and Tida
Wave for made, we progressed to the public beach to register for the Cruisers’
Regatta. $30 to enter the boat including
one meal. Additional meals were
$15. There were drinks for sale, and
gratis munchies courtesy of the locals.
The Regatta dinner is another fund raiser for the sloops and is a ton of
fun. We registered, drank and ate and
laughed and chatted, meeting more cruisers and learned more about this
remarkable place that boats come back to year after year. Fireworks to come and we had a front-row seat
reserved on our boat and so we went home to get ready – OK, to have a nap so we
could see mid-night! We woke to a ship’s
horn blast and realized it was time to get up.
We sounded our air horn with dozens of others, anchored by the big
yachts deep wails. Then, fireworks and
more fireworks and more – for 15 minutes.
WOW.
The next morning we were up early getting Kind of Magic
ready for a sail. We had met Wilma and
Barrie on SYRENA – a 37’ Hunter with a home port of Penetang, ON while at
Warderick Wells. Barrie and Wilma are from Oakville and have
been down a number of times, now hauling out in Marsh Harbour for the
off-season and trailering in Canada for the hurricane season. They have hauled out in Dutchmens Marina at
Penetang many years as well and we both know some common boats there. They are in their 60s but we have a lot in
common and we’ve had a lot of laughs together.
They decided to take a cruise around the bay with us and so we anchored
our dinghies and set off. The 10 am
start became a 10:30 am and we made it across the start line. I’ll cut past the battles and near misses,
the tacks and the gybes, the pushes and the stolen winds and just say we
finished a respectable 10th.
Sorry, I forget how many in the field, I can only say with confidence it
was double digits and the committee boat noted “Kind of Magic... first in our
hearts.”
Back to the anchorage, dropped anchor and drifted back to
set anchor and was in a boat hook’s length of our dinghies, spot on. I was on fire that day! Well
post race celebrations were on, the bottle of Champagne from Eric on Baha au
Rhum was opened and orange juice poured.
We capped a great day with the Cruisers’ Regatta award ceremonies and
prizes.
Here’s us with our grab-bag
- beautiful hand-woven palm beach bag
“Staniel Cay Crusing Regatta” as it says each and every year and flowers
decorating. Inside, a loaf of banana
bread and a loaf of coconut bread, a bottle of rum, and other Staniel Cay
souvenirs. The bread went quick! Then, drinks and dinner. The dinner was Bahamian fare (chicken, fish,
pork, mac ‘n cheese, salads) across from the beach and was marvelous. Again,
all proceeds to fund Lady M and Tida Wave.
Staniel Cay was just great, we met lots of great people, and
had a really fun time. We met up with
old friends and met new friends some permanent liveaboards, some seasonal, some
going north, most south, some here for the first time like us, others having
come here for over 20 years (like Martha and Dave on Antigone a 32’ sloop who
winter here for 3 months and work in Minnesota.) One thing we share is the hope and desire to
come back again.
January 2, we started to get ready to move. We had been anchored right in from of SCYC
and the public beach. So, we took a
dinghy ride around Big Major’s Spot to the west beach to visit some
residents. Well, we didn’t see any
flying pigs but these sows swim.
We also
stopped and said hi to Manon and Alain on Nauticus and their daughter and her
fiancé.
2 hours and 10 miles (5 miles as the seagull or Boston Whaler flies with no worries of draft) later we were at anchor in the town of
Black Point, Great Guana Key. This is a
town of some 200 and the local police officer and undercover DEU (drug
enforcement unit) officer and his boat are here, the Batelco office (open
Tuesday and Thursday) and all the necessities are here: Ida’s Rockside laundromat (it really is clean
and nice and is the BEST laundromat we have been to in 6 months – Ida also
rental rooms and cabins overlooking the bay), Scorpio’s Bar & Rest.
(Zhivago – yes people call him Doc – is the owner and does happy hours on Tues,
Thurs and Fri 4-6, but sometimes 3-7 and sometimes on Mon and Wed and/or Sat as
well), Adderly’s General Store, Lorraine’s Café (great food, Wed & Sat are
the Bahamian bbq buffets and Lorraine’s mom’s breads are really good – her
coconut bread may be better than beer), Deshamon’s restaurant, the free
community wifi, water avail (only limited for drinking, please make donation to
school) and garbage (no charge but please make a donation.)
Black Point has a great dinghy dock, great
holding in sand and grass, protection from everything except SW-NW and the
people are truly welcoming. This is not
Staniel Cay, there are no mega yachts or big white palaces. The boats here are almost all sailboats and a
few trawlers, totalling about 25 boats on average. This community is laid-back, there is a paved
road that the kids skateboard on, there is a school and the men fish and some
commute about 4 miles to Staniel to work there.
We are very much reminded of a northern Ontario village.
It's not all sundowners and munchies and parties and regattas and snorkeling and drinking beer and swimming and walks on beaches and socializing and walks and BBQs and fireworks and parties and... Sometimes real work has to be done - hey where did that beer come from?:
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| The crew needs to be bribed to do work! |
Lastly, it is always a good idea to have a stock of parts and supplies on board and to know where you might find something that you do not have on board or do not have room for. I am not divulging where I saw this!
Stumped? Sorry, can't figure out how to turn this properly. Sailboats generally have them, motor boats generally don't. One sailboat certainly doesn't have one!
Well, we are here for a few more days and then on to Little
Farmer’s Cay. Someone was really
thinking, putting a line-up in like Warderick Wells serenity then the
activities and fun of Staniel Cay following by the laid-back welcoming
community of Black Point to recharge in to be capped by a stop in at the real
tiny Bahamian fishing village of Little Farmer’s (advert: .
Those in the know say the Exumas are the best cruising grounds (and that
says a lot) of the Bahamas (which is the best of the Western Hemisphire – close
second is our North Channel) and this section of the Exumas is the best of the
best. We hope so because we have run out
of superlatives and the mailboat doesn’t arrive for a few days :-)
HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone, we wish our family, friends and fellow cruisers all the best for a great year. Find a dream and work at it and make it happen. Follow your dreams wherever they lead you. Cast off the dock lines, get on that plane, take that sabbatical, JUST DO IT!
Black Point, Great Guana Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
2556.9 NM / 2940.4 STM / 4704.8 KM - January
8, 2014; 4 3/4 months out
Blair & Edi
