Ñandú

Today is the fourteenth straight day of strong non-stop Easterly winds during a month when we should be transitioning to a gentler summer pattern. The relentless noise wears you out. Whether at anchor or not, twenty knots make everything more tiring and complicated. And of course, things break and fly away at a faster pace. As a windsurfing addict I used to beg for winds like these; now if I was offered five knots for ever I’d take it without blinking! So much suffering has not been in vain, though.

Lee Stocking Island

Rat Cay wasn’t a particularly interesting place, so we sailed northwest as far as the thin water allowed on the protected side. It wasn’t too much in terms of distance, but we ended up in a beautiful, secluded anchorage that we had for ourselves most of the five days we spent there. There were four sandy beaches nearby, amazing rock formations, and trails to explore with access to the ocean side.

Leaf Cay

And then there was the small Leaf Cay three nautical miles away, an adventure within an adventure. Since it was windy, we decided to use the wind to propel our dinghy, but when we were in the exposed channel between the islands, it started to feel a little too windy to be out in such a small craft, fighting chop, gusts and current. While we know that we can climb back to the dinghy from the water, we’ve never practiced turning her right-side-up in the event of a capsize. With that thought on the back of my mind I had my hand always ready to ease the sheet, and even then there were a few close calls.

But we made it, wet but safe, to a spectacular destination, well worth the effort. With a favorable current, the way back was faster and smoother.

Move towels, cushions and other crap out of the way to open the locker. Untie the empty propane tank. Move it out of the locker. Wait, no, it doesn’t want to come out. First disconnect, untie, and take out the full cylinder. Then the empty one. Then put the full one back, reconnect and tie again. Close the locker.

Get ready: hat, money, dry bag for the cell phone. Have an argument with the first mate (details to remain private in order not to embarrass her, but it had to do with propane transportation).

Step down to the swim platform, pull the dinghy closer to the boat (if it wasn’t already in the water, add about 27 steps). Load the tank, step into the dinghy (carefully, as we know it’s tippy), untie the oars, untie the painter. Row to the beach. Land. Step into ankle-deep water. Drag the dinghy several meters up the beach and tie it to a tree, since the tide is rising. Grab the tank. Follow a sandy path through a shrub forest to the main road. Enjoy a free and not exactly painless foot scrub, courtesy of the wet sand inside the Crocs.

Follow the main road under a scorching sun. When crossing the road, remember these crazy Bahamians fancy driving on the wrong side of the street. Turn right, follow a smaller road to the Bahamas Electricity Company, an uninviting and messy place (it’s a power plant, after all) with three or four small buildings. Walk to the one building with an “Office” sign on the door, although the plants around it show the door has not been opened in at least a year. Knock, hopelessly. Knock again. Try to open only to confirm it’s locked. Forget about the sign and walk half a block to another building to repeat the process against another locked door.

A guy shows up from nowhere. Certainly not from any of the buildings. “You want propane?” (The container must have been a dead giveaway). “Follow me.” Follow him to a structure with a big roof, where he fiddles with valves, levers and hissing hoses. Another guy shouts from the distance: “It’s not working!”. “What, this valve?”. “The whole thing. The main pump.” No propane until a spare part arrives from the capital. The first guy shrugs and apologizes: “It was working yesterday.”

Undo all of the above in reverse order.

The original plan was for my mother’s visit to overlap with our daughters’ for a full day, but I screwed up with the dates and my mom landed in George Town just a few hours before our daughters’ departure. Four of us took a taxi to the tiny Exuma International Airport, the five of us shared a Bahamian lunch at the airport, and three of us took the same taxi back.

I was somewhat surprised that my 77-year-old mom didn’t really ask questions regarding what to expect, other than whether to bring warm clothes or not. She’d never been on a sailboat before (actually she had, but for a short sail on a small boat that she didn’t remember, so that doesn’t count anyway). Once she got here she explained that she chose to come to the unknown as an adventure. And an adventure she had.

The taxi left us on the main road at a place where the only indication that we were somewhere was a “Beach Access” sign at the head of a trail into the forest. In the morning, when we left for the airport, the beach was empty. Now, being a hot Sunday afternoon, locals and guests from the nearby resorts were enjoying the beach. We must have offered quite a show to the crowd when we emerged from the forest. The out-of-place elements in the bizarre scene included a suitcase with rolling wheels (I don’t think I have to tell you, but beaches are made of sand, and wheels don’t roll in the sand); an old lady smartly dressed for the air-conditioned environment of airports; and a colorful dinghy occupying premium space in the middle of the beach.

My first mate and I moved the dinghy to the water, loaded it with the luggage, and struggled against the surf to keep it steady for my mom to step into it. I’m sure she didn’t expect to get her feet wet so soon after landing. From there it was a short row to the mother ship, and another struggle to keep the tippy dinghy steady for the parental transfer.

After so much excitement following almost 20 hours of air travel and layovers, we let her rest for a full day. From then on, every excursion required the services of Gecko the dinghy, which involved some near misses. The closest one was when Kathy was already in the dinghy and I was sitting on the deck using my feet to keep Gecko steady and in contact with Ñandú. Then my mom stepped down to the dinghy placing her feet close to the center as I had insisted, but she then sat on the rail! I tried to compensate for the unbalanced load by pulling the rail up with my foot, with little effect other than hurting my toes. Seawater rushed over the rail around my mom’s butt. As the gap between the small and the big vessels increased, Gecko tilted even more because Mom was still fiercely holding Ñandú’s handrails. You know, you can’t be in two spreading-out boats at the same time for too long. Meanwhile Kathy was providing no help at all due to an incapacitating laughing fit after the hilarity of the situation. “What do I do! What do I do!” Mom cried, looking at the water between Gecko and Ñandú that seemed to call her. “Lean to the center!” I shouted. She barely managed not to fall overboard when letting go of the big boat, and calm returned once her torso was closer to the center line than the rail.

Little Exuma Island

Crossing the Tropic of Cancer on a rental car does not have the same taste as doing it in your own sailboat, but geographic and time restrictions did not leave any other option. And to be honest, I didn’t realize until now that we did cross that line during our wheeled excursion from Great Exuma Island to its southern neighbor, Little Exuma Island. A milestone that I had thought deserved a small celebration went unnoticed.

The swimming pigs of White Bay Cay

One of the famous attractions of The Exumas is the swimming pigs of Big Major Cay: feral pigs that are kept well fed by locals and tourists. There are several theories of how the pigs originally made it to that uninhabited island, one of them being that they were placed there precisely to attract tourists and bring business to the region. I personally believe that the Big Major Cay pig colony started fortuitously, and then the model was copied in some other uninhabited islands. We haven’t yet been to Big Major Cay, but we visited one of the spin-offs, White Bay Cay, which shelters a dozen pigs.

Barraterre: the grand finale

From White Cay we moved a short distance to Rat Cay, which is a 2-mile dinghy ride to Barraterre (population 118) where Mom could take a taxi to the airport two days later. The only problem was that the forecast called for rough conditions for the next several days. So much so that even I was concerned, particularly with landing in an unknown place, with strong onshore winds, moderate surf, a septuagenarian, her luggage, and the need to keep the precious cargo dry before a long inter-hemispherean flight. The decision was for Kathy and I to make a dry run (figuratively speaking, of course) the day before to test the waters, calculating that the conditions would be no worse on D-day.

It took 40 minutes each way, but we came back with a plan. The passenger would have to cover herself with a waterproof layer from head to ankles. Since it’s hard to swim when fully clothed, I demanded a life jacket as well in case of a capsize. Kathy would stay on the big boat; that meant fewer hands for the landing, but with less weight the dinghy would ride higher and thus drier. Location-wise the municipal dock was the best place to land, but it’s a high dock with a ladder — too much risk in anything but calm waters. We chose a small beach south of the dock as the landing target. A walk on a rocky shore to the taxi was required, but doable. The suitcase wheels would be as useful as they were in the sand.

In the end, it all worked fine.

It was short but sweet. Here’s a dozen pictures worth 12,000 words.

Bonus material