Its nice to be at a place where people come together and help each other, instead of arguing and dividing themselves into camps, following blindly an information feed designed to get more views and follows. By that I mean cruisers, especially single handers. Largely I’ve found single handed cruisers tend to be more complex people, even if they are young. Being out here at sea in solitude, away from distractions of the worldliness must have some purifying effects.
The five hour passage to Man-o-War Cay went by quickly. To do so, you have to leave the protected Sea of Abaco for about five miles through a small cut in between submerged reefs and the island of Whale Cay. This is because there is a very shallow sand bar that cuts across the Sea of Abaco. No biggie. All I really had to do was to time my departure to avoid on-shore conditions, which is easily done if you do that portion of the trip during a flood tide. The rest of the trip was a easy, beautiful twenty-five nautical mile cruise with beautiful pink and blue waters beneath my boat.
When I got there, I realized the cut to get into the harbor was tiny. Maybe ten meters across. It looked narrower than the length of my boat. And it was lined with rock! But Sonora made it through without a problem. I had to watch for mooring balls while keeping a hawkish eye on my depth sounder. They had put up mooring balls absolutely everywhere, and way too close to each other. The northern harbor, which was more desirable due to the proximity to town, had maybe one or two spots I could have anchored. But these holes were really small. I moved over to the Eastern harbor, though it is really more the ‘Southern harbor.’ I cussed at the number of mooring balls. No one owns the water, but once someone puts a mooring ball out, they get to charge you for it. But it is their frontage, not mine. I have to play by their rules.
After some stressful runs up and down the harbors, slicing through between tightly packed mooring balls. Eventually I found a bigger area that was clear. I say big, but with the amount of rode I wanted to have out, it was still a very tight fit. It was strange that the space existed, but I was glad for the opportunity. The bottom was a very, very grassy sand and I was very uneasy about my anchor set. I took a plunge and followed my anchor rode down to the depths. I couldn’t tell if my anchor was set, or just fouled with grass. I dove again with my camera and took photos of it. On the swim back, I discovered that there was a fridge on the port side of my rode. Great. I didn’t want my chain wrapped around it after a few swings.
I messaged my friends Ed and Sebastian asking how I should deal with the problem. While waiting for an answer, I decided to do a full power back-down to further set the anchor. My next dive made me satisfied. The anchor was completely buried, with just the shank showing through the sea bed. This anchor isn’t going to go anywhere.
Now I had to deal with the obstruction. I dove down to the fridge to see if I could move it. Not a chance. I did notice a huge pair of spiny lobster antenna sticking out from it. I think its cute that lobster get curious and poked its head out, even though doing that to someone like me that might be a death sentence. I named it Sebastian.
The winds were going to veer to an easterly before picking up a bit, which would cause my boat to swing clockwise. Sebastian told me if its just chain touching the fridge, all I’ll have to deal with was noise and that it was no big deal. My friend Sebastian, not Sebastian the lobster. I had been alone at sea but I still had my sanity. But it would cause me to wrap my chain around the fridge when the winds shift.
On my next dive, I spread my arms out, grabbed two points of the rode and pulled the boat closer to the anchor. With that slack, I quickly dived to the chain portion of my rode and picked it up, moved it over to the other side of the fridge. Problem solved. This wasn’t a long term solution. The right thing to do would be to anchor somewhere else. But it was entirely sufficient for my purposes and there was no reason to further complicate things.
While I was below, I found a giant concrete mooring anchor under my keel. More like a mooring weight. This kind of anchor doesn’t hold when the winds blow extremely hard. A few meters from it was a sunken mooring ball. Hah! No wonder there was a spot for me to anchor. Just to make sure I had enough sea under my keel, I dove down to the concrete block and stood on it, holding up my keel to keep myself from ascending. I felt like Hercules. But it was more than my own height below the keel so I was going to be fine, even at low tide.
A locally made cat rigged dinghy sailed by me lazily. Although he could have been someone born and raised in Man-o-war cay, he asked me where in Maryland I was from. He must have gleamed that fact from my registration numbers on my boat. He said he was originally from Baltimore. Seemed like a nice fellow. He sailed around the harbor in what was about eight knots of wind, with his shirt off, just relaxing in the little boat with his dog. What a life he had. It was still a mystery if he was an expat, or a visitor, or a combination of both.
On my dinghy ride to town, I met a man named Richard that was sailing with his adult children. He was on a beautiful boat named Strider. I forgot where he was from — I think somewhere in New England, but we chatted a bit. He sat lazily at his stern push pit bench, looking as relaxed and as shirtless as the Baltimorean and I floated on my dinghy holding onto his boat, all the while the sun painted beautiful Caribbean colors around us. What a life!
I climbed the ladder to the public dock and I saw a golf cart. An elderly man, who could have been pushing the age of ninety drove towards me. I asked him where the grocery store was, and he just asked me if I needed a ride. I took the ride and thanked him before I walked into the store.
From speaking to the lady behind the counter at the grocery store, people on this island were very, very puritan and serious, God-fearing people. Everyone was extremely polite. I bought a packaged hamburger, some soda that was on clearance, and in exchange, I received some information about other things on the island.
The island looked to be in better shape than Freeport, but there was still a lot of destruction. People seemed to have a good work ethic, and the island had a few sources of income. First was donations from religious institutions around the world. Second was their shipbuilding industry. That’s right! This island had a rich history of building ships. All the way back to the wooden age-of-sail days. Today, they build the well-renown Albury borther’s boats here. Everywhere I looked, it was very busy with construction activity. People seemed happy and focused. I trotted over to the Atlantic side and watched the waves gently hit the rocky and sandy shore. It was a breathtaking sight, but the remains of a destroyed resort right next to it was a somber reminder of how people have suffered here.
I saw some kids get dropped off in a golf cart and play pick up basketball by their small elementary school. You don’t see a lot of mixing between black Bahamians and White Bahamians, though I have no doubt that they still feel like they belong to the same community. It’s just the way it is here. But it was nice to see a group of kids with different skin tones playing basketball, without any class or racial divide. I ate the hamburger there, listening to the sounds of the waves and children playing basketball. The hamburger was excellent, and I’m not someone who ever thinks hamburgers are something that could taste excellent.
I had arrived too late in the day – most things were closed. But I scoped out much of the island and took a nice long walk down Queens Highway, which is a narrow concrete road that cuts through the island from north to south. The Northern part of the island had more working boats. The Southern part was more homes and some stores. I walked back via the shore road and saw the boat yard. They were building a lot of power boats there. I wondered what kind of seas an Albury Brother’s 23 would handle. They were renown for being able to handle choppy seas and were of extremely good build quality. Their bow edge and sheer lines reminded me of a sailboat, owing to their traditional shipbuilding heritage. They have a shipyard in the US as well, and the boats have a great reputation. I daydreamed about owning one of these very expensive boats, built right here on this quaint island with a population of two hundred, and running her for my business.
Sun was setting. I stood at the end of the Sail Shop dock — I’d return there later — and admired the spectacular view. I smelled some garbage. I guess I don’t have COVID-19 yet. I looked towards the direction and saw a very big self-powered trash barge headed south. Must be a shallow draft boat. They headed straight towards a moored catamaran, and maneuvered easily between the boats and mooring balls. Sunnuva.. and there I was, complaining about having to drive my small thirty foot sailboat in the harbor. This barge comes in regularly to collect trash at the trash collection point on the north side of the island.
I ran into the old man in the golf cart again, and saw that the front of the cart said ‘taxi.’ I apologized profusely to David, and asked him how much I owed him. He wouldn’t take any money from me. All he wanted to do was to chat a bit about the island and where I was from. I know I’m a rarity here due to my ethnicity, but he didn’t make it feel like I was a spectacle. I told him about the lobster in the fridge. He encouraged me to take it, even though it was illegal. Its a constant theme here – if you only take what you’re gonna eat, no one minds.
On the ride back to Sonora, I noticed a sign that says ‘Mooring only. No anchoring.’ at the entrance. Hah! Yeah right. I will anchor if I can anchor. I’d find out in a few days that the sign survived hurricane Dorian unscathed, when in the heads of many cruisers, it deserved to get destroyed. But it somehow survived. I made some hearty dinner and drank some coffee in my cabin. I drifted off to sleep relatively late, my thoughts fixed on my anchor and how it’d perform once the winds shifted.
Next day I headed straight towards the cafe and museum. There was some sort of outdoor function there. They had pastries out and the residents were chatting outside. I wasn’t invited, but a friendly person asked me if I was looking for the museum entrance and guided me towards the door. How nice of her. It was a small museum built into a single family home. There were a ton of cool items from say, the past century of this island. But it was mostly about one or two families, so I sort of lost interest. One cool thing I saw was a canvas sailing jacket sewn many decades ago by the Sail Shop. It had a cool Man-O-War cay patch on it, which has a silhouette of the Man-o-war seabird. What a cool design. I wished I could get one.
So one of my friends in the Sailing Club back home, Genevieve, spent some time on this island. Her father had the family ketch built at Man-O-War, a beautiful Albury Brothers design. Her stepmother also crewed on the Schooner William Albury, now known as the SV Traveler. This boat used to be the flagship of the Bahamas! When I showed a picture Genevieve’s family boat to David, he said ‘That’s definitely a Albury design. Something about that bow is very distinct.’ It was the same bow shape that the power boats still had to this day. Very cool.
Of course, the lady at the Sail Shop loved that story too. David later told me that’s his niece. She was also an elderly person, and I really enjoyed talking to her. The sail shop actually isn’t a sail shop. Many decades ago when this Island still built sailing vessels, the men of the island made the sails. The women would take scrap material and make bags, jackets, and other goods. And the tradition persists until today, and even survived hurricane Dorian. But the bags were now made from Sunbrella since the Albury Brothers yards switched to power boats. Genevieve had asked me to get some stuff from the shop, so there I was. I didn’t plan on buying anything for myself. But I couldn’t resist. The bags looked really good, and apparently, they last for decades. I needed a new toiletry bag so I bought some small tote bags for that purpose. And I bought some bigger bags for Genevieve in a few different patterns.
But before I even spent money there, I commented on how cool the patches on the bags were. I asked the lady if they had the patches for sale, and she just gave me one. ‘Go ahead and put that in your pocket, before the other girl comes back. She’ll probably charge you for it.’ My first gift in the Bahamas! It was really sweet of her. I am definitely going to sew it onto something when I get back. It put a huge smile on my face as I walked out of the shop.
I tried to go to the woodworking shop I saw the day before. The shop clearly said ‘wood shop is behind the building.’ When I went around, there was a guy sitting in a chair talking on the phone behind the shop. Next to him was a beautiful wooden frame of a boat that was in the process of being built. It was a great picture – so I asked the man if I could take a photo. The guy looked really annoyed and said ‘its closed mon, he is not here, go away.’ Okay, I’ll go away. I decided to not include that shop in the day’s plans.
I was a bit upset at that interaction but I ran into David again and talked to him. It reminded me that people on the island were still very friendly. The guy at the wood shop probably wasn’t from here; probably a hired hand from Freeport to help with the rebuilding.
Now a lot of the out islands have a drinking water station that was set up as a part of a humanitarian mission. And this island even had a gasoline pump. It was only open for three hours on strange parts of the day. So, before I had even went to the museum, I had gotten fuel and water. A friendly person who I thought was a tradesman at the Albury brothers yard showed me how to work the water system. You open a big valve at the cistern, then you run the water for a few seconds until it wasn’t brown anymore. The water tasted great and looked fresh. I just took five gallons of it to replenish the few gallons I’d used on Sonora. The left over water was used to do laundry.
After doing laundry on my boat at the stunningly beautiful anchorage, I took a dive to try and take the lobster I found under my boat. At first, I tried to go grab it but his carapace was too spiky for my hands. I didn’t have any gloves, so I went back and grabbed my spear. I took the three prong stinger tip with me. First three attempts, the spear just bounced off. The last attempt, the lobster dodged the spear and the tip got lodged in the fridge. I could not get it loose. I resurfaced to take some air, and dove back to recover the spear. I circled around the fridge trying to get a better angle on my spear tip. I could see the lobster wedged in the side, and one of my prongs caught in something.
On the last dive, after struggling with the spear for a little bit, I decided to give up. I started to unscrew the spear from the tip and retrieved the spear shaft, fighting against my urge to resurface. I ended up staying down a bit too long. When I resurfaced, I briefly saw a person aboard Sonora, dressed in blue. A split second later, I realized I was just looking at my blue mainsail cover. I had been hallucinating, or to be more accurate, my brain was struggling to process what I was seeing due to the lack of oxygen. Crap! I will remind myself not to push myself, even if its only in 12 feet of water. Sebastian was probably laughing at me. No wonder it got so big – Sebastian was crafty and impossible to take. The next person trying for this giant lobster will get a laugh looking at my spear tip.
That night, I stayed up late again but I wasn’t worried about the anchor anymore. My boat had swung as predicted, and Sonora’s transom was only thirty feet from the western shore. The destroyed pier on that side seemed to be dangerously close. But on my lobster dives I saw that the anchor stayed buried and simply turned 180 degrees. Sonora wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, I worried about my laundry, precariously hanging on my lifelines with a few clothespins in twenty knots of wind. The wind picked up even more as the night went on, so I brought my damp clothes inside. They’d have to dry inside. And with my clothes drying above my head, I quickly passed out.
