South and Back

by Nicholas Walsh, PA

Last month I left off at Spanish Wells, the northernmost settlement in the Eleuthera archipelago of the Bahamas, my wife and I on a long cruise in our 34-foot cutter rigged sailboat Far and Away. From Eleuthera we cruised south, and spent the night in Hatchet Bay, on the west coast of Eleuthera. Hatchet Bay is perfectly protected, the entrance being a very narrow cut, and inside there is fair holding ground.

The town itself, Alice Town, has seen better days. It was once the site of a government-subsidized plantation producing dairy and produce. The subsidies ended and the plantation seems to have ceased production some years ago. The town is poor.

Just before we entered Hatchet Bay we had caught a fat mutton snapper, far more than we could eat, and we offered a nice fillet to the owners of Diamond Sky. Diamond Sky invited us for drinks, we made friends, and for several days we cruised as “buddy boats”, sharing anchorages and cocktails, lots of fun.

Two days later we dropped the hook in Little San Salvador, a remote island now controlled by Holland America Line. Early the next morning a huge cruise ship came in and moored not too far from us, and quickly made clear that so long as the ship was in cruising yachts were unwelcome. Excursion boats, jet skis and para-sail boats roared around us, and we took our cue and got going.

Our destination was Cambridge Cay, Exumas, 70 miles away across Exuma Sound. With the trade winds behind us we had a wonderful sail, and caught a Mahi Mahi (“dolphin”) along the way.

The Exumas are an island chain 100 miles north to south, thick with excellent anchorages and interesting settlements. It is also home to the island retreats of the rich and famous, movie stars and all that. John Malone, the media mogul who owns 50,000 acres near Jackman, Maine, has a private island with a big home. He is said to use it two weeks a year.

We visited Cambridge Cay, a national land and sea park. The snorkeling was wonderful. Cambridge Cay has moorings, and we picked up one of the last, a mooring designed for a mega yacht. Such a yacht came in soon after us, and picked up a light mooring we had passed up as it was exposed to the swell. But a deckhand came over asked whether we would consider swapping, and we happily did, getting a huge bag of ice in return, along with their sincere thanks.

Some cruising sailboats disdain the huge motor yachts one sees throughout the Exumas. Not us. For the most part these yachts behave themselves, and frankly I like having a large, well-supplied, professionally manned small ship, one equipped with capable small craft, nearby in those remote and sometimes dangerous waters.

Along the same lines, what a comfort it is when cruising the islands to see a United States Coast Guard MH-60 hoist-equipped Jayhawk helicopter on routine Bahamas patrol. The Coast Guard operates two small air stations in the Bahamas (Great Inagua and Andros islands), giving my old outfit the ability to conduct operations throughout the archipelago. Among the world’s nations very few can field and efficiently operate a rescue helicopter fleet, and seeing those powerful orange and white machines on our Bahamas cruise underscored how fortunate we are to live in a country that can do so.

We spent a week in Georgetown, Exumas, which hosts hundreds of cruising boats each winter, many Canadian. The crowded anchorage was not really our style, but friends had arranged to rent a house for the week so we stayed and enjoyed ourselves.

Georgetown was our furthest south. We turned north, stopped in at Spanish Wells, and for a month visited the Abacos, the northernmost Bahamian island group. The Abacos have wonderful settlements like Man of War, known for its boatbuilding, Hopetown with its red and white lighthouse, and bustling Marsh Harbor.

If these names are familiar, it is because each was very badly damaged last August, in Hurricane Dorian. Reading the news I had thought that these island settlements, some three centuries old, had of course suffered damage, but that they had weathered severe hurricanes before and survived, and so, tucked into the lee of their low coral hillsides, would they also have survived Dorian. I was strictly speaking correct, but it is also correct that Dorian was the worst hurricane on record to have struck the islands, with one-minute sustained winds measured at 185 mph, many tornadoes, and a terrifying storm surge. My friends who underwrite reinsurance policies (policies insuring the insurance companies themselves against excess claims) tell me their hired climatologists, politics be damned, report that climate change is unambiguously genuine, and that storms winds are worse and storm tides higher, and destruction greater and more widespread, and that by the year it is all getting worse. The Abacos took a terrible blow in Dorian, and while it is true that they will recover, these low islands will be hit, again, again, again and again, by ever more furious storms, perhaps to the point where habitation is impractical.

We now cruised to the west, spending two nights in interesting Grand Cay, to which the population of nearby Walkers Cay was relocated after hurricanes Frances and Jeanne destroyed Walkers Cay in 2004. The Big Daddy Fishing Tournament was going on, a derby intended to allow participation by visiting fishermen as well as locals, so it included critters one could catch from a skiff.

We spent some of our last nights in the Bahamas in the Double Breasted cays, pristine, full of fish and natural beauty, nature when the world was new. This is the Bahamas we had come to love the best.

A day later we were headed west across the banks, and then the Gulf Stream, to Florida. My wife had to go home, so a friend and I had a swift passage offshore to Charleston, where we enjoyed the oysters and night life, and then another friend helped me bring the boat offshore to Newport. My wife joined, and a couple days later we were anchored in Isle of Shoals in fog and drizzle, the temperature barely in the 40’s, the diesel heater blasting, New England cruising in May. Then home to Freeport.

We didn’t round the world. We didn’t even cross an ocean, but it was quite a trip. Harder than I thought it would be, and very, very satisfying.

Now I’m back. Stay out of trouble – but if trouble finds you, give me a call.

Nicholas Walsh is an admiralty lawyer practicing in Portland. He may be reached at 772-2191, or nwalsh@gwi.net.