Car-less Exuma Adventures

March 17, 2013

 

We have stayed at Emerald Bay Marina longer than anticipated due to weather.  Emerald Bay is a bit away from things and without a car your options are limited, since there is no bus service.  We had planned to rent a car on Thursday to go to the opening of the Bahamian Heritage Festival in Georgetown but were unable to get one. The Heritage festival is widely attended  by Bahamians from throughout the islands. It is also Canadian school break week so cars are next to impossible to rent.

 

But being unable to rent a car has led to some wonderful adventures made possible by some gracious African Bahamians.

 

First I personally, and I think Americans in general, do not  like to be dependent on someone else;  I think it goes against our culture of independence.  When talking to a friend once that has faced some serious medical issues, I asked him what God was teaching him through his struggles.  He said that he is learning that for every giver, there must be a receiver of that gift.  He had always thought of himself as a giver, and now he was learning how to allow others to enjoy giving to him.  While I am in no way comparing our carless situation to his serious medical problems, his answer has broadened my appreciation for giving and more importantly receiving.

 

We had learned from one of the marina workers that a restaurant in Rolleville, a small settlement 8-10 miles north of here, had a good buffet and on Saturday had a van that would take people from Georgetown and parts north to the restaurant and return.  When we called to arrange a pickup, they told us that they were not running the van today due to the Heritage Festival.  But they said that they would come pick us up!  Right on schedule Elvis Rolle, who with his wife Maryann, runs Exuma Point Restaurant pulled into Emerald Bay to pick us up.  After talking to Elvis and asking some questions about Rolleville, he took us on a tour of the settlement and explained some of its history before we arrived at the restaurant.  Upon arrival we met charming Maryann, who was born on Cat Island, our next destination. She gave us the name of her brother who runs a children’s home there and told us to look him up.  It was not a busy day there because of the Festival, but it was a wonderful opportunity for us to talk to them both.  They joined us at the table and we talked for some time. They both work full time jobs, run the restaurant on weekends, and manage the restaurant at the airport – they are busy folks,  but seemed happy to spend some time with us.  The buffet was delicious and if you get a chance to visit them, take the opportunity.

 

On our previous visit, John, one of the marina workers had invited us to an ordination at his church which we attended and enjoyed a lot.  But we wanted to go to a regular worship service there.  Learning of our lack of a car, John offered to pick us up in the church van.  So at 9AM John arrived at the marina to pick us up. I had previously told John that I had left the states with two Bibles, both of which I had somehow lost.  John proceeded to give me a gift of a new bible that he happened to have.   I offered to pay, but John refused. 

 

We then proceeded to tour several of the nearby communities picking up: Miss Portier, a cousin of Sidney Portier, who in spite of some serious medical  issues exuded joy and subsequently led the young children’s bible study;    Sister Sarah, a lovely Exumian women;  a group of young people with a small baby from Curtis;  and stops at several other houses.  None of these folks could have attended without John and the van.

 

Arriving at Mt Sinai Union Baptist Church in Stuart Manor, we joined John’s lively  adult bible study before the worship service.

 

John’s wife, ‘Sharmain’, warmly greeted us and offered us bottled water.  She later led a very spirited time of worship.

 

The message was delivered by Marcus Rolle, a man born and raised on Exuma  who led a troubled life as a young man.  The local pastor, Cedric Smith, mentored him and he now lives and is involved in ministry in the States.  He returned to honor Rev. Smith who will be retiring in few months.  He calls Rev. Smith ‘Dad’, to acknowledge him as his spiritual father.  His message was very good as he encouraged the congregation to “Hold On and Don’t Give Up”, loving people like Rev. Smith loved him.  As we left Pastor Smith shook my hand warmy, looked me straight in the eye, and warmly said "Please come again".

 

Before we reversed our van trip, John picked some sapodilla, a local fruit for us to try and at Miss Portier’s he picked a few papaya for us from a tree near her house.  We got back to the marina at around 2 PM, after a full ‘morning’ at church.

 

 

 

One thing that we have learned, that it is hard to out-give the Bahamians.  They often have relatively little by American standards, but enjoy sharing what they have with others. They are truly very friendly and generous people.

 

 

Tom

Docked at Emerald Bay Marina

Exuma, Bahamas

 

 

 

 

 

Watching SU in Big East Championship

March 16, 2013

We had a rare treat this evening watching SU play in the Big East Championship.  We do not have a TV on the boat and we rarely dock and have a TV available.  But things aligned tonight to allow us to watch the game.  We are docked at Emerald Bay Marina on Exuma Island which has a very nice 'club house' with a wide-screen TV.

Luckily Joyce noticed a Facebook post about the championship game and suggested we try to watch.  It is the first basketball game we have watched in two years.  Cruising is great, but there are definitely things you give up.

We even brought our SU water bottles.  We make a special effort to buy these bottles, because they are very sturdy;  most water bottles these days have been made very thin and flimsy to cut down on plastic waste.  But we refill our water bottles all season and need sturdy bottles.

Unfortunately after a great first half and an early second half 16 point lead, Louisville roared back and beat the Cuse soundly.  Sad ending to a game that already had a sad undercurrent, as SU and many other schools leave (or have already left) the Big East for other conferences.


Tom
Emerald Bay Marina
Exuma, Bahamas

Immigration Lets Us Stay!

March 14, 2013

 

On Tuesday, March 12 we traveled by rental car from Emerald Bay Marina to Georgetown Immigration.  Our previous approved stay was set to expire on 3/19.  We had tried to extend at the Immigration office in Long Island, but that office would not renew our stay until the day it expired or at earliest the day before.   Rather than wait in Long Island for almost 2 weeks we decided to return to the Georgetown office who had previously told us they would extend within 2 weeks of expiration.

 

Well the great news is that we got a 90 day extension to 6/20/2103, more than enough time for our plans.  Georgetown Immigration was very nice and processed the extension in about 15 minutes.  Below see our immigration papers.  Our original stay is at the bottom, and the extension is near the top.  Please note all hand-written dates are DD/MM/YY.

 

 

 

 Actually as we count the days, we may be ‘illegal’ on next Wednesday 3/20, but we will trust that Immigration did the date math to their satisfaction.

 

We also did some provisioning and other tasks on that day and got to spend some time with friends Rick and Susan of ‘Just Cause’.

 

We had hoped to leave Emerald Bay yesterday, but there was still a large ground swell, that made the channel very rough.  A ground swell has large widely spaced waves originating from a far away storm.  At its peak, these swells were 14 feet high with a 15 second period (that is long). Today the ground swell is way down, but last night a front came with fairly strong winds, so we are still trying to determine when we will leave. 

 

While we are here, however, we are making the ‘best of  the situation'. We have discovered a nice restaurant at the nearby Grand Isle Resort http://www.grandisleresort.com/ which is open to the public.  In December this resort was host to a photo shoot for the 2013 Sports Ilustrated swimsuit issue.  Yesterday, we also bought day passes to the resort which gave us access to their pool - no swimsuit models present as far as I could determine.  We do not often have such amenities;  the last time we swam in a pool was at Twin Dolphin Marina in Bradenton back in October.  It is nice to take advantage of marina/resort facilities once in a while.

 

 

Tom

Docked at Emerald Bay Marina

Great Exuma, Bahamas

 

 

 

 

 

Long Island - North

March 7, 2013

 

Yesterday we rented a car for another day and traveled north.  Our objectives were to get our immigration stay extended and to see the north end of the Long Island.

 

We failed to get an extension on our immigration stay.  We were 13 days from the end of our current permitted stay and the official at Stella Maris airport insisted he could only extend it on the day it expired or at most the day before.  We were told in Georgetown that they could extend within 2 weeks by calling Georgetown.  When I relayed what we were told, the officer said “ I have never done that”.  Dealing with immigration is one of the most frustrating aspects of cruising in the Bahamas.  The requirement to appear on the expiration day is a real burden to people like us traveling by boat who are subject to wind and weather.   Our current plans are to return to Georgetown and get an extension there. 

 

We visited the Columbus Monument at Cape Santa Maria, the northern end of the island.  Long Island is regarded as Columbus’ third stop in the New World. As we have come to expect, the road to the site was long and very rough.  In deference to our Dodge Caravan (an ‘awesome’ off-road vehicle) we parked about a ½ mile from the monument   and walked the rest of the way.  Ironically, after the very rocky section just past where we parked the road was much smoother. 

 

 

 

The monument impressively sits high on a point overlooking the Cape.   The views in different directions are strikingly different:  

 

Ocean-side

 

 

Beautiful white sand flats

 

 

Salt Pond to the south

 

 

We found it interesting, that the monument is primarily dedicated to the Lucayans, the  indigenous people of the island.   Between the diseases that the Europeans brought and brutal slavery, the Lucayans were virtually extinct in a short period of time.  Very sad and oft repeated story.

 

We then visited Cape Santa Marina Resort  http://www.capesantamaria.com/. The whole Cape area has beautiful white sand and the beach at the resort is gorgeous.  It regularly appears in the those lists of ‘Top Beaches’ and graced the cover of a recent edition of Frommer’s Guide to the Bahamas.

 

Lastly we visited the ruins of the Adderly Planation, another failed Bahamian agricultural project.  Again the road to the site was rough and the site poorly marked.  We would have never found the ruins if not for the advice of another cruiser who advised to turn right and walk down the beach where you will find an unmarked path; in all honesty although it had no sign, it did have a few conch shells marking the start of the path.  As with most of the ‘ruins’ that we have seen, they are overgrown and crumbling and will not be much to see in a few years;  historic preservation is not a priority in a third-world country.  Joyce says she has seen enough ruins for the trip.

 

When we returned to Thompson Bay,  a west wind had picked up in late afternoon and we had a very lively and wet dinghy ride back to the boat.

 

 

Tom

Anchored Thompson Bay

Long Island, Bahamas

Map of Cruise 2012-13

 

Long Island - South

March 1, 2013

 

We are currently anchored at Thompson Bay/Salt Pond on Long Island.  Most boats anchor in the northeast corner of the bay, but we have been located about a mile south near the government dock, predominately amongst local fishing boats. 

 

A neighbor - Trawler 'Southern Comfort'

 

 

Although slightly shallower, this location has a number of advantages, most importantly a short dinghy ride to the Long Island Breeze dock, the center of cruiser activity in this area.  It is also somewhat calmer in the moderate southerly winds that we have been experiencing since we arrived.  Additionally, the northern bay has, uncharacteristically for the Bahamas, a fair amount of silt making it less suitable for water making.   Our current anchorage is, however, unprotected from the west, and we will soon move north for the upcoming strong north west winds.

 

The Long Island Breeze http://longislandbreezeresort.com/ is a very nice restaurant/small resort that was just built and opened in 2008.  The owners' timing was, of course, unlucky in that they opened right before the global recession.  They are nice folks and we hope that they can weather these economic times. 

 

Yesterday we rented a car and toured the southern part of the island.  We first traveled about 20 miles south on the Queen’s Highway to Clarence Town and visited the Flying Fish Marina www.flyingfishmarina.com/.  This marina is one of the southernmost marina facilities in the Bahamas and is used as a base by sport fisherman for the rich fishing grounds to the east. It is also used as a staging point for cruisers heading to the eastern Caribbean. 

 

We scouted out the restaurants there and found a couple that offered the usual fried fish/conch and burger menu that one somewhat tires of in the Bahamas.  It is actually somewhat difficult to find ‘authentic’ Bahamian cuisine in the islands.  Luckily we stumbled on the ‘Le Pon’.  It had the profile that we have come to identify – small and plain, off the beaten tourist path, predominately takeout, and visited by a stream of locals.  Also as typical, the menu is brief and changes daily – today’s entrees were  ‘steamed fish’ and chicken wings.  I had, the steamed fish, Joyce had the wings.  The name of the fish dish is a little misleading, in that it is a whole small fish, deep fried, but then finished by being cooked briefly in a sweet onion sauce.  It came with coleslaw and grits.  The grits were fantastic – they were somewhat like peas and rice, but with grits as a base.  The plate was overflowing (I wish I took a picture) and  I didn’t think I would finish it, but I did – it was all delicious!

 

Highlights of the trip include visiting several of Father Jerome’s churches and Dean’s Blue Hole.

 

Father Jerome was an architect and Anglican priest that was dispatched to the islands in 1937 after a hurricane to help rebuild the churches there.  His distinctive style is evidenced in numerous Anglican and Catholic churches on Cat and Long Island.

 

 St Peter's - Clarence Town

 

St Peter's - Clarence Town

 

 

Church in Dunmore

Church in Dunmore

 

 

A blue hole is a small deep area situated in much shallower water.  Dean’s Blue hole at 632 feet deep is reputed to be the deepest one in the world, and its location right next to the shore also makes it unique.  While we were there, a couple of young men were ‘free-diving’ from a platform that is situated in the hole.  One performed a free dive to 50 meters – he was under water almost 2 minutes!

 

Dean's Blue Hole

Dean's Blue Hole

 

 

Tom

Anchored Salt Pond

Long Island Bahamas
Map of Cruise 2012-13

 

 

 

Thompson Bay, Long Island

February, 25 2013

Yesterday (2/24) we traveled across Exuma Sound to Long Island (no not the one in New York) and then about half-way down the west coast to Thompson Bay.  Exuma Sound, although loosely defined by the outer islands of Long, Cat, and Eleuthera, is a deep water passage worthy of respect.  The fact that the trip is basically east, right into the prevailing east-southeast winds, adds to the complexity of the crossing. 

We waited in Emerald Bay until the forecast offered winds shifting to the south, which pretty much held true.  We departed around 6:30 AM for the fairly long day-trip. Early on, the winds had not clocked as far south as we would have liked, but they did offer a good motor sail at 30 degrees apparent for about 20 miles of the 30 mile crossing at which point we got a good close-hauled sail until we reached northern Long Island.  After turning south to head down the coast to Thompson Bay  we returned to motor-sailing.  We arrived a little after 4:00 PM after covering about 54 miles.

This location marks the southern-most point of this year's trip at around 23 degrees 20 minutes north.  This is the farthest south we have sailed in our own boat (we have sailed on charter boats in the Virgin Islands which lie farther south).   

After staying here for around a week and hopefully extending the 100-day stay immigration granted us when we cleared in Bimini, we will travel north along the islands forming Exuma Sound.   We also hope to travel to Rum Cay, an island that lies about 30 miles east of the northern tip of Long Island where historians mark Columbus' first landfall in the new world.


Tom
Anchored Thompson Bay
Long Island, Bahamas
Map of Cruise 2012-13

Great Exuma Adventures

February 22, 2013

 

We are still at Emerald Bay Marina waiting for a weather window to cross to Long Island.  This stay has allowed us to catch up on numerous boat chores and explore the island of Great Exuma.

 

A New Friend

 

Yesterday we returned to Big D’s restaurant in Steventon to have some more of Alvin’s fresh conch salad. Since the weather was a little squally we decided to sit inside.  As we entered, I noticed two young African Bahamian girls sitting at the end of the bar and thought it a bit strange since it seemed they should be in school. 

 

Shortly after we sat down at a table near the window, the younger of the two came over and started to talk to us.  Her name was D’Wan, she was  7 years old and in 2^nd grade and she was singing a catch-phrase from a Disney show.  We are big Disney fans (strange but true) and we immediately had a lot in common with her.  She knew about the current Disney shows we watch and surprisingly knew about some of the older shows that are no longer aired on the Disney channel – apparently they run on some other channels.

 

D’Wan was a VERY smart little girl who loves school and is anything but shy.   Shortly in to our conversation, she told us “Ask me a math question – not  multiplication”.  After faltering a bit on Joyce’s first question, which I thought was a bit hard, she nailed that one and several more.  She sang the alphabet song  and then recited it slower with just one hitch when Joyce asked her if she could do it without the song – Joyce is tough!  (Comment from Joyce: she sang the song so quickly, I wasn’t sure that she had said all the letters).  When I asked her how to spell her name, she said “I will write it for you” and left to get a piece of paper.  After she didn’t return right away, I thought maybe we were forgotten. But then she returned with a little note, decorated with hearts and signed with her name.  She later demonstrated her cursive writing skills.

 

When Alvin brought our conch salad, we asked her if she would like some and we fixed her a little plate.

 

We told her a few things about ourselves and she shared many things in her life; for example,  she is losing her baby teeth and pulls them herself – “It hurts more when someone else does it”. She was investigating the salt shaker and the kernels of rice included in it to keep the salt from clumping, and shared many things about salt including that if eat too much you will get high blood pressure!  She ‘knows’ how to perform a physical exam, because “She watches when the doctor does hers”.  

 

D’Wan is a remarkable young lady, and we think she has a bright future – maybe as a doctor. 

 

Oh, just so you know, the kids were out of school on midterm break.

 

 

Ordination at Mt. Sinai Union Baptist Church

 

Yesterday we attended an ordination at Mt. Sinai Union Baptist Church in nearby Stuart Manor.  We had talked to the marina staff about local churches, but it did not look like we would be here long enough to attend one (last Sunday we were too tired and too little time after doing laundry starting at 6 AM).  John, the dock master, had offered to give us a ride to his church if we were here on Sunday, and later asked if we would like to attend an ordination at 7 PM on Thursday night.   A young man named Desmond Williams from Exuma was being ordained.  It was quite an experience.  There were at least 20 pastors in attendance, some from the Union Baptist Denomination but several from other churches showing their support along with members of the church, family, and friends – the place was packed. We clearly stood out in a sea of black faces.  The service, which included several songs from the choir, was highlighted by a sermon by Bishop Neil Ellis of Mt Tabor Full Gospel Church in Nassau. Bishop Ellis talked about the role of a pastor – he was very good.  Desmond had experienced significant spiritual growth while attending Bishop Ellis’church and they had a close relationship. The service was a ‘short’  three hours and it was a late night for us. 

 

We really enjoyed the service and the local senior pastor at Mt. Sinai and wish we could return for a regular worship service, but our current plans are to leave for Long Island on Sunday.

 

Tom

Emerald Bay Marina

Great Exuma, Bahamas