Eleuthera! What a beautiful name. Did I perish at sea, and find my afterlife-self on some mythical paradise? The name is derived from the Greek word eleutheros, which means free. All around me was calm seas, dotted with friendly islands with beautiful foliage. The same brilliant Bahamian sun and sky looked a bit different, a different tint if you will, as I was in a vintage photograph.
I didn’t know how action packed the day was going to be, but it was really good to have a friend who has the same energy level as me. We’d get a lot done. I think having a buddy around helps you do more things.. Not only is there a second hand when you need it, but you motivate each other. For example, I did not get a lot of sleep last night, despite being very tired. Even though I was a bit groggy today, having discussed plans the night before, I was motivated to stick to the plan. You also become a bit less careless about everything you do, because there is someone else watching you do things.
There are some drawbacks too. When I’m travelling solo, I have an easier time meeting locals and other cruisers. I’m more motivated to be interesting, cater to peoples’ curiosity, and to try to connect with strangers. This cruise is teaching me that I’m less introverted than I thought. But when I’m with a friend or two, I get a bit tribal and become less open to strangers.
I am not sure if I should count this as a drawback, but you are also trying to make plans with someone else. It somewhat removes an element of freedom, but also makes you push yourself a bit. Here is an example. There were some big winds coming in this weekend and I was very tired. If I were alone, I may just decide to stay here a few more days and ride out the winds. But Rob’s been here longer than me, and he wants to move. So, I end up making plans that are efficient — taking a closer weather window to make it to Hatchet Bay.
These past few days doing things together with Rob could be described by all of these things. The next morning after our reunion, I was woken up by a really annoying rocking motion. The wind had shifted and brought some really uncomfortable waves. Rob was still sleeping, so I picked up anchor and moved my boat to a spot a tad bit better protected. I was still getting rocked, but I was able to make breakfast and do some little tasks on the boat, waiting for Rob to wake up. When Rob woke up, he had initially thought I had left him. I could imagine him looking at where my boat was and feeling betrayed. Of course, he realized all I did was move the boat a bit. He was getting pounded worse than me, so we both moved the boat north to just outside Spanish Wells harbour. Just to hang out, we did this in a very inefficient manner. We moved his boat first, then took the dinghy back to my boat, and then we moved my boat. It was kind of silly to do this since we are both fully capable of moving our own boats at ease. But it was really fun crewing on each other’s boats.
After we relocated our boats, we did most of our errands in town, which for me included fuel, water and getting cash at an ATM. We found a good, affordable spot to get food. After all that, we walked to the Atlantic side of the island and enjoyed looking at the beach.
Our absolute favorite shared common activity is to go reef diving. The next day, we packed up our gear and made it out to the outer reefs, where we got to taste a bit of an area called Devil’s Backbone. With that kind of bad-ass name, it has got to be some bad ass diving there. It is a poorly charted area with unmarked reefs and shipwrecks everywhere. Its bad enough where people will hire a guy named Bandit to be a pilot for their boats. Apparently you just hail him on the radio and he comes blasting out on his boat! We saw him come and go a few times, his Whaler in tow on whatever boat he was piloting. That was cool to see.
The reef was a bit more thriving than the reefs out by Abacos, but a bit less impressive in grandeur. It was somewhat murky, comparable to a clear day in the Space Coast of Florida. We didn’t take any game. All the fish were much wearier than I am used to seeing, their curiosities failing to overcome their fear. Even the normally curious grouper would only glance at us before taking cover. We still got to enjoy watching the diversity of marine life at the few different reefs we dove. We’d eventually figure out why the fish were so shy.
There was a big fish we haven’t identified yet. It looked like a species of snapper snapper with spot near its tail. Rob it dive into a hole in the reef beneath him. I dove after it after Rob told me about it. I didn’t see anything. So I moved on, swimming out around the perimeter of the reef, disappearing from Rob’s view. Rob watched the fish come out of its hole and swim in the same direction as me. Then he sees the fish reappear, swimming quickly back the way it came from. A moment later, he sees me, chasing that fish. It must have been a comical sight. I managed to discover how fast I could swim when submerged with my fins, but of course, I wasn’t able to close the gap to land a spear shot on it. We are clumsy beats in the water, for sure.
A very large barracuda kept following us, prompting me to turn around to chase it away. Then, Rob signaled me to come to him quickly. When I got there, he told me he saw a large shark go around the other end of the reef, so that we should stick together. For a while we continued our hunt, but we’d take turns scanning our perimeter to make sure the shark wasn’t stalking us. Some of the more aggressive sharks get more feisty when the water is murky.
And there he was. When we were hunting in a different part of the reef, the shark appeared. It was a juvenile bull shark. A tad bit longer than me. The bull shark’s demeanor was different from the nurse shark. It had a lot more purpose and intent in its movements. Definitely a more lethal predator than the big nurse shark I saw near Little Harbour. It swam around us in a distance, half-curious, but I think it was trying to avoid us as much as we were trying to avoid it. When it did approach us a little bit, I pointed the spear and approached it slowly, which drove the shark away. While this is happening, the barracuda was still hanging out near us.
This is why the animals in the reef were so shy. While this reef was thriving with both coral and fish, it was also a predator heavy reef. I do enjoy looking at sharks and I’m always in awe of these animals. But next time I’d like to find a reef without any of these larger predators, so that I could harvest some fish.
Rob enjoyed the dive more than I did. I’m a bit more of a hunter than Rob was, and I was not fully content without having taken any fish. I kept remembering how amazing the reefs at Little Harbour was, and Rob did not get to experience that. We talked about the reefs he missed out during our long dinghy ride back to our boats. Back home, we reorganized for our next mission – get to town and do another errand. Go grocery shopping. We went back to the same restaurant with our loads of groceries and got some drinks and food.
I can’t help but notice how people feel so down to earth here. People don’t look at us like outsiders, though undoubtedly they notice it. The locals are much more willing to talk to us like we are just normal people. Part of this is because not a lot of tourists come here. We haven’t run into any other cruisers or resort visitors while we’re on land. So, after all, we’ve reached ‘real’ Bahamas. Very cool.
The third day was also filled with activity. It also started out with moving anchorages, to account for another wind direction change. The wind had shifted south, but hadn’t had enough time to build up waves. So we moved the boat back south towards our first anchorage but on the eastern side of Meek’s Patch, where we got better protection from southerly winds. This time, we each moved our own boats. We were able to get some really cool photos Sonora and Lena Rae, which is the name of Rob’s boat. After moving anchor, we ‘dove’ into the day’s activities.
I had to fix a cabinet sliding door rail that had fallen off. Originally I had planned to epoxy it in place, but I found some double sided tape and decided to do a quicker repair. After that, we beached our tenders at Meek’s Patch and looked for a slow leak in each of our boats. My zodiac kept losing pressure on the port tube, and Rob’s tender had a leak that brought water into his deck. I couldn’t really identify where the leak was, or if my boat was leaking at all. But I patched the suspected location. While the PVC patch was doing an initial set, we walked around and explored the beautiful island.
I’m not really a big fan of beaches, especially if I’m already on the water. I do absolutely miss California beach towns, but thats becauase I miss that surfer village vibe of the area more than the beach itself. I don’t like the inactivity that comes with hanging out at beaches, though its always nice admire those of the other gender, trying not to make my gaze too obvious. I was on my phone telling my friends about how I didn’t really like being at a beach, when I took a photo to show my friends what that was like.
I looked at my phone screen and looked back on the beach. It was absolutely stunning. The white sand of the beach continued into the water, only interrupted by a thin line of foam generated by the waves. Then the white slowly became a brilliant blue, terminating at the horizon where the sea meets the sky. All around me, just behind the beach, is a beautiful small forest composed of the Caribbean evergreens and palm trees. The forest floor covered in a brilliant green-ish brown from the pine needles that covered the forest floor. It made for a clean, soft ground. Not an inch of land on this island was unpalatable. Okay, over here in the Bahamas, maybe I am a beach guy after all.
On the island, I beriefly saw Andrew and Pia on Andante, whom I’ve met in Little Harbour. They were having a walk along the beach. They invited us for a drink on their boat, but unfortunately I had too many things I had to do. I hope I run into them again — I’d absolutely love to have a drink with Andante.
Rob retired his dinghy to his foredeck so that his very real, and very necessary patch could set and not get wet. In contrast, my patch area was above the waterline. Our mother ships were now anchored two miles from Spanish Wells. We now had to take the much smaller and slower tender from Sonora to get to civilization. It was a full thirty minutes before we got into the harbour, knowing that our return trip in the dark would be more challenging. Rob got to dispose of some old oil he had at a commercial dock that had a facility to take old oil. I had to get more cash and fill the dinghy’s gas can. After our respective errands, we ate some food and drank a beer at the restaurant we’d been going to.
This is a good time to mention that for some reason, people at Spanish Wells love country music. I’m talking about new school, TMZ country music. I hate that genre. Our bartender also agreed that country music wasn’t that great, but she could not give us an answer why that music was popular in Spanish Wells.
The restaurant has a lazy, lethargic black cat that reminded me of my cat back home. There is also a big cage with two African grey parrots next to the restaurant’s patio. My last contact with a parrot was when I had a cockatiel back in college. I forgot how child-like they were. The parrots are shy, though one said ‘hey!’ to me. But the parrots are hilarious. They get quiet from shyness when you get close to them, but when you walk away, they start chirping, chattering and screaming again to get your attention. They also meow at the cat to mess with its head. Its an exact replica of the black cat’s meow.
I was so tired. Not only we had an action packed three days, we also had a very sketchy and a very dark dinghy ride back to Lena Rae and Sonora. To avoid getting wet, we both sat low between the tubes to the dinghy floor. Rob’s skinnier butt and my bigger butt were wedged in between the two tubes. Me on the tiller, Rob with the light. The boat took low but choppy waves for a full thirty minutes, while we kept our heads on a swivel to avoid getting run over by another vessel. Every once in a while a wave would come over and drench us. The anchor lights of the boats at a distance seemed to never get any closer.
The next day, we were leaving early in the morning to make the Current Cut on time to make a safe passage through it. We planned for being there ninety minutes after Nassau high tide. This part of Eleuthera is interesting. On the western side, tide coincides with Nassau’s tide schedule. On the eastern side of the cut, in the Banks of Eleuthera, its two hours behind. So the western side, where I am at, has possibly a full foot of higher water than the other. This results in some intense currents. Hence, we go for a time where water levels will be similar.
I was excited to try this cut the next day. Wanting to finally get a full seven hours of sleep, I crawled in my bunk. I was out before I knew it.
Eleutheros – I do not know any greek nor do I posses any knowledge of the classics. I looked it up on Wikipedia.
Back Home – Rob refers to Lena Rae as ‘home.’
Phone – Whatsapp has been my favorite way to keep in touch with friends back in the States. As a bonus, many Bahamian businesses are on Whatsapp.