Entry from 12/27 continued
You know how the water looks like in the old James Bond movie, Thunderball? That’s how the water looks here, even though I was in the Grand Bahama Island and he was in Nassau. I woke up to a similar scene. Clear water, white bottom all around, and big motor yachts and sailboats on the horizon. The night was very uneventful. Blissfully, we had a very calm night.
Judging by how easy the anchor was weighed, I’m not sure how good the holding was. Despite this, we did not drag. All the vessel had to deal with were some easy currents. Everything went smoothly. It especially helped that Alec is such a fast learner, especially considering that he has never been this involved in boat operations before. Some folks are good with manual skills. Others are not, though they can become good at it if they work at it. I was in the latter camp.
After the three day passage, the few hours it took to do the twenty nautical miles to get to the other side of Grand Bahama island felt very short. Before we knew it, were in Old Bahama Bay marina in West End. We followed a vertically-cut wall of coral head rocks, methodically cut with fairy square corners. The development of these harbors were very interesting. The whole island sits on a giant piece of old coral. They take machinery and explosive and carve out a waterway into the island. You head into such waterway, looking at walls of old limestone and coral that seems to extend uninterrupted into the water and the sea bed. There are fish everywhere.
We’re just at a place to clear customs and immigration and its already beautiful. The dock hand and lady behind the customs counter were really friendly and nice. I’d foolishly applied for a forty days travel permit, even though something might happen that may force a longer stay. I tried to be polite and charming in an attempt to get more days on my travel permit. She gives us sixty days on our permit. I probably didn’t have to charm her at all, but why leave it to chance! Afterwards, the customs officer comes to my boat and checks over the boat’s only weapon, a small handgun, and counts the ammunition. Just peering into the magazine windows was sufficient for her. Everything went smooth. This was my first experience of Bahamian hospitality. She makes it a point to let us know to take down the Q flag and to make sure to display the Bahamian ensign as courtesy flag.
This is when I started noticing a bad trend. Some other people, especially people on sport fishing vessels fresh from Florida were not as polite, nor as well prepared. I wouldn’t say these guys were outright rude, but they definitely expressed some frustration in a way I would never have. Alec reminds me its entitlement. I remembered a delivery captain I had met in North Carolina who was bragging about how he could get fake vaccination cards easily. We are in someone else’s home. If you behave in a less than stellar manner and break the house rules, you’re being a bad reflection on the entire country that you come from.
I really needed to try to check this tendency to think the worst about people. The last two years had made me such an angry person, though I had eventually taught myself myself some techniques to deal with my anger. Here is my check – I’m also extremely privileged, partaking in this hyper-recreational activity, not working for three months, and also traveling to the same island as these guys. I had good parents and an international upbringing that taught me good behavior. These guys have not.
On the trip over from West End to Freeport, we saw a lot of flying fish. For me, it was for the first time. I didn’t know they actually flew. In documentaries, they seemed to just jump out of the water and glide. No, these fish had powered flight! They would swim out of the water at a shallow angle, emerging at speed above the dead calm surface. As they breached the surface, they’d extend their wing-like pectoral fins, continuing their tail stroke. In the air, without all that dense water resistance, they continued to accelerate. Their motions left a fun looking wake that was as straight as a laser. At full speed, the fish would lift its tail out of the water and glide just above the surface for a pretty long time, flying for over ten meters before returning to the water. Sometimes it would be multiple fish doing this, drawing straight lines across the water all going in different directions. Sonora herself left a straight disturbance on the water, but she was relatively cumbersome and clumsy.
While I was re-checking my plans, I discovered that the marina I wanted to stay at had been closed down due to the damage sustained during hurricane Dorian in 2019. Ed and Bill, my MVP shoreside support friends stayed in contact with me and helped me figure out what to do. Together, we weeded out the places that were not open, and eventually discovered the Ocean Reef resort. My friends made calls and sent e-mails for me. The reviews said the staff at this marina never monitor the VHF, and that other cruisers will hear the hails and respond as well as help dock. The reviews also mentioned that a ton of Canadians are at this marina and resort. We learned all of this while being underway under power along the south coast of Grand Bahama island. What an age we live in, and what friends I have.
The sights on the left side of the ship was remarkable. Beneath the rays of flying fish darting across the surface was an amazing, translucent sea. Despite its deep blue color, you could peer into it. Further up were the tan and green colors of the Grand Bahama island. The alien vegetation of the native flora really drove the point home that we were here. And of course, above that was the lighter blue of the sky, with the clouds colored a brilliant white thanks to the stronger sun of the lower latitudes. Just as our fatigue and misery were ever-present, spread out evenly over the days, a level of excitement persisted in us even after half a day of being in Bahamian waters.
Freeport harbor came and went. We got to watch pilot boats, freighters and supply barges come in and out of the uncharacteristically busy installation. What we thought were oil platforms jutted out above the otherwise featureless water along this coastline. I’d find out many months later that they were moored and floating oil platforms left there, possibly because of an aborted project to drill into an oil deposit well offshore, south of the Bahamas.
As we started approaching the Ocean Reef harbor, we started attempting to establish contact with the marina. After five or six hails, two people responded to me on the VHF and explained that, just as I had read, to go ahead and take up a slip once I am in. Though it was only three thirty in the afternoon, the marina and resort office was already closed. We’d have to to go pay and register the next day. I got a chuckle out of this brand new experience. We made it past the line of reefs south of the harbor entrance, and enjoyed a wonderful view of yet another coral-cut harbor. A few turns later, we approached an empty slip, with the nice folks talking to me on the radio at the dock, helping us. And the user reviews were right – they were all Canadians. And no one knows why there were so many of them there. Few days later, my boat neighbor Ken would lend Alec one of his bicycles too. I was no stranger to the generosity of cruisers, but out here in the islands, it seemed all the much sweeter. I gave Ken my business card and told them to come by the District of Columbia sometime. I told him that I’ll give him a nice tour of the river.
To be honest I didn’t want to spend this much time talking about our entry to the Bahamas. Don’t get me wrong, we were incredibly excited to arrive. But what we did on Grand Bahama Island deserve just as many words. For example, we spent all day one day cycling around Freeport and got what I wanted — to see what life was like for city Bahamians. The southern side of the island near Freeport and Lucaya is full of resorts and other tourist attractions. The rest of the island, not so much.
A lot of people already live in poverty here, but Hurricane Dorian brought on close to a twenty foot storm surge, especially on the north side. The average altitude of the island is thirty feet. Most of the island was submerged by this surge. Destruction had covered much of this island with over three hundred people dead in the nation. Two years later, many of the homes were still being repaired. The difficulty of getting resources , beurocracy, and to some degree, the laissez-faire culture regarding work are all a cause of this. On some bad years, life on the island can be described as including a constant cycle of destruction and repair. Homes don’t get fixed within a few months like they do in the United States. They take years.
Although this is the second biggest city in the country, it really isn’t a big place. Freeport does serve as a transit point for fossil fuels, but otherwise, the city really exists to cater to tourism. Both the pandemic and the destruction brought on by the hurricane severely reduced the number of tourists to the island. So Grand Bahama Island was suffering hard. We cycled past so many hotels, shopping centers, and other establishments that were closed and crumbling. At some parts of the city, teenagers were a bit hostile, and other people were always trying to swindle some money out of you. Despite having grown up in an expat household, I totally forgot how to be an one. I ended up giving a man some money for giving us helpful information we already knew. No big deal, but I’m going to stop walking around with this dumb smile on my face , making myself a target everywhere. When we got to the northern end of the island, we turned back to return to our resort marina, not wanting to be in the heart of the city at dark. Back to our luxurious existence, complete with the hotel pool and expensive restaurant situated right by Sonora’s berth.
We even got to get a first taste of free-diving. There used to be some reefs lining much of the coastline of Freeport and Lucaya. Unfortunately, shoaling from hurricane Dorian took most of them out. Still, there was a mooring ball for dinghies placed at some reefs just outside the Ocean Reef harbour. We took the dinghy out in some bumpy conditions and enjoyed going down to the sea floor. Despite the endless fields of dead coral, covered in white sand, there were fish swimming around. For now, just being in very clear water was exciting for us.
The line between what is touristy and activities locals do to enjoy to relax is blurred. I think this is something really cool about this place. Alec found a couple of cool spots near the beach and I went to join him. Our favorite place so far is a little shack on the beach called Bernie’s. It is a driftwood and discard lumber shack sitting on an extremely picturesque part of the beach. Bernie’s is staffed by the owner, an older, tall and handsome gentleman called Mr. B, and his server, who we also all call Ms. B. Mr. B stays behind the tiny corner of a ‘kitchen’ that couldn’t be much bigger than Sonora’s galley and makes amazing food out of fresh ingredients of the day. Ms. B serves the food and drinks.
A speaker, some kitchen appliances, and the weak incandescent lighting is all connected to a generator, its noise drowned out by the loud, upbeat Bahamian dance tunes coming from the speaker. There are nails sticking out everywhere of the structure. Unless you want to hop the counter, which may result in injury from one of the nails, you enter by walking to the northeast corner of the building. Then you walk around anyone sitting or standing by the perimeter to find your spot to sit. An inexplicable design, but this is how it is here. Others either sit out on the picnic tables closer to the beach or stand outside the counters. Miss B comes by with her bubbly but deep and slow island flirtatiousness and takes your order. The beach breeze continues to blow.
Someone haphazardly stacked up scrap wood and pallets on a sandy patch next to the driftwood shack. When we arrived there, I’d kept smelling kerosene and wondered where it came from. In a short break between cooking meals, Mr. B walked over and lit the fire. The very large stack of wood caught fire quickly, and splashed everything around it in a flickering, natural light. It looked pretty dangerous to me but it was nice to get some heat in the cool night. A patch of grass nearby also caught on fire, and people ran over to move their scooters and bicycles away from the bonfire’s kill radius. Despite this chaos, the music keeps playing and the food kept coming. The on-shore wind kept blowing, tickling the palm trees into shaking their leaves and blowing a mix of heat and cool ocean breeze onto your damp face. One meal is complete, and Mr. B makes the announcement by shouting very loudly. I am still not used to the Bahamian dialect and I have to concentrate to understand. That’s the other thing about Bahamians. The men seem to express most positive emotions by shouting it at the top of their lungs, followed by a satisfying chuckle.
I had pork ribs in BBQ sauce and Alec had a fresh snapper. Both of our respective meats came topping a local staple food called peas and rice. I forgot what Alec had as another side, but I had steamed corn also. We didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the spiciest meal we’d have for the rest of our stay in the Bahamas. To a native Korean like me, the spice hardly registered, but I really liked the extra flavor. Unbeknownst to me, this would be the best meal I would have in the Bahamas. To have this on our first few nights in the country, after days and days of bland, home-preserved food, was amazing. We washed it all down with several strong goombay punch based cocktails sipped from a cheap plastic cup. We walked and cycled back to the resort marina, pleasantly drunk. I missed this. I hadn’t casually, drunkenly and slowly made my way home with a friend in a very long time.
One other thing about these restaurants is that when it is your first time there, you get a little bit of a cold shoulder. You’re foreign and you are here to spend money; you’re a target. You get a bit swindled by being pressured to order what is apparently the only thing on the menu that night, which is also conveniently the most profitable item on the menu. But the second time you’re there, you’re already one of their friends. At Bernie’s, it meant that you can ask for different things, ask them to make the meal smaller, or make something special. If they got it, they’ll do it! It reminds me of the Japanese show I watched on Netflix; Midnight Diner.
This was the case when we returned to Bernie’s the next day. Earlier in the day, we had checked out another place that the Canadians seemed to prefer. It was also full of jovial, shouting Bahamians, but we liked Bernie’s better. When we arrived, we thanked Mr. B for the amazing meal the night before. He looked at Alec and proclaimed very loudly; ‘That’s the best thing eva, isn’t it? Ha-ha-ha!’ I thought Mr. B was going to slap Alec’s back hard enough to send him back across the gulf stream straight into Gainesville. Fortunately, Alec was just beyond his reach.
Bahamians seem to be very, very colorful. These colors show in their music, attitude, speech, and the clothes they wear. But they are also very conservative and traditional. People tend to cover up and not expose too much skin, making me feel a bit guilty for wearing a cut-off shirt with a giant skull on it. They are usually wearing long pants. The women are quiet. The music is a typical, old-world psalm about being married, but being tempted by other women, or how life is miserable because a woman took everything the songwriter had. But it is done in a very catchy, merengue-esque tropical beat called Calypso. Ever since hearing Calypso for the first time, when I’m bored, I’d get the HF receiver out and just listen to some Bahamian jams coming through the AM frequencies.
There are two things I’m going to have to program into my brain while I’m in the Bahamas. Not Cycling on the right (wrong) side of the road, and saying ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’ to every single person I see. In these Islands, even people in cars will honk a greeting at people on the side of the road. Its just part of the culture here. Greet everyone you see. A few weeks later, I would learn that its about acknowledging that persons presence. What a nice thing to do.
It is obvious that I am the only Asian person here. I got a lot of curious looks from every single person I walk by, whether that be a local, expat, or a visitor. Not in a bad way though. I actually saw a few Chinese tourists in Lucaya Harbor’s shopping district. Turns out that would be the last time I ever see an East Asian person in the Bahamas. I still had so much more that I’d learn about this wonderful country and its people, but as I laid in my bunk on my third night in the Bahamas, and last night in Freeport, I decided that the best word I could describe Bahamians is ‘friendly.’
Next day, we’d leave for the Abacos. It’d be a hundred nautical mile passage, another one of those tiring all-day-and-night cruises. Thankfully, I had Alec, who is growing more and more capable by the minute. I’d miss the heck out of him when he had to go back in a week, but I hoped we got to do a ton of really cool things together as we explored the Northern Bahamas.
