Update - Week Ending 1/2/00

Y2K Bahamas Style

We've been just worrying ourselves sick about potential problems as the end of this year approached. That is until we found out that conch are already Y2K compliant! No problem mon! Just a little New Year's humor!

Oh that's year 2000, Bahamian style. The answer to everything...tomorrow. When's the mail boat coming? Tomorrow. Can I get some fuel? Tomorrow. When's the phones going to be fixed? Never!

Our new friends on Calypso Poet and La Vie have been planning a millennium celebration in Pipe Creek in the Exumas. Here's the story. Last year they got stuck by weather for 23 days in a place here called Pipe Creek. Not that it's such a bad place to get stuck, but in three weeks of going nowhere, you can get pretty bored. Well, one day they started to build a little Tiki hut out of stuff that was found washed up on the beach. This Tiki hut became known as the Pipe Creek Yacht Club. For the past year, Ann and Al have been planning their celebration here. The planning included membership cards, special invitations to the millennium celebration, iron on transfers for t-shirts and an 8x10 photo of each member in front of the yacht club. We all left Warderick Wells park bound for Pipe Creek anxious to see if the yacht club had survived the hurricanes. As it turns out not much was left standing. But then again who are we kidding, there wasn't much there to start with. So in the course of a morning, we rebuilt and rededicated the new Pipe Creek Yacht Club.

Joyce made a suggestion to do a happy hour at the yacht club the next day. For this, she was appointed the social director. Promptly at 4:00 p.m., Bahamian time that is, we made our way over to the beach, cocktails and appetizers in hand but noticed that no one was standing anywhere near the Tiki hut. In fact, we noticed everyone creeping closer and closer to the water. Once ashore, it took us only moments to discover why...the no-see-ums were out for blood! Vicious little suckers and they were all over. We braved the assault for about a half hour but then gave up, grabbed the appetizers and high tailed it back to our boats.

We really enjoyed our stay at Pipe Creek and we felt badly about leaving our friends here, especially as they had put so much thought and effort into their millennium celebration. The reefs here are very pretty and the conch plentiful. On Wednesday, we went out in search of a few conch for dinner and accidentally stumbled on to a ‘conch walk'.....Hundreds and hundreds of them all lined up, crawling all over the bottom and themselves. All sizes including many that were legal. If you can imagine walking down the meat section at the grocery store saying "I'll have this one and that one...that one's a little small and that one is a little big but this one will be just right." It was that easy to collect enough conch for ourselves. Of course the hard part is getting them out of their shells and skinning the slimy beast in preparation to cooking it. I broke my Dollar Store hammer trying and was about to give up when Don on Suzannah came along. It was his first time dealing with conch, but he seemed to have a great knack for getting them out of their shells. From there, Joyce finished the skinning process. Later, we invited Don and Sue over to savor the results... cracked conch over rice. Quite good.

But we really wanted to be in Staniel Cay for New Years and we are glad we were. This small settlement of no more than 200 people puts on a good show for New Years. The weekend was chocked full of activity such that we were happy to get some rest once the festivities were through. Thursday night was the auction in which everyone donates something to be auctioned off to benefit the New Years celebration and activities.

Friday, I was fortunate enough to be picked in a lottery to race aboard a Bahamian Sloop C class dinghy in which natives and tourists race together. This 4-5 person craft, about 18 feet long, has tremendous sail area for a craft this size. The sail area is kept in balance by moveable ballast placed outboard on moveable planks. In this case the moveable ballast was me! To keep the boat from tipping over, we had to climb out on these planks as far as possible. To tack, you have to climb back in, move the board over to the other side, and then climb back out again. All the while, someone was following us in a small Boston Whaler shouting instructions to us. I found out later that this was the owner and builder. Too old now to race the boat himself, he still takes great pride when his boat does well. In fact, the competition is rather fierce, a source of tremendous pride, and the race was followed by every man woman and child in the settlement.

Later, we were invited aboard the large cruising catamaran, Feng Shui, for a New Year's Eve pot luck dinner. Nancy is truly a gourmet cook and the meal was spectacular. But just when we couldn't eat another bite, Nancy brings out this special desert; ice cream (which wasn't easy to find on this island) over a homemade chocolate brownie. We made ourselves sick but could not resist...after all, Joyce hadn't had ice cream in weeks. But where else would a trauma surgeon, a marine surveyor, a lobbyist, and engineer get together and have something in common. It's one of the things that makes this lifestyle so unique and special.

Still later that evening, there were fire works at around midnight and Junkanoo that started at 4 in the morning and lasts until sunrise. We really wanted to see Junkanoo but sadly, we were too tired to face a long wet dinghy ride to the dock so late in the night. Uniquely Bahamian, this tradition has it's roots in the age of slavery. The slaves had only so much time to celebrate and had to be ready for work by sunrise. Also, the slaves wore elaborate costumes to conceal their identity from their owners as some of the rites conducted during Junkanoo may be considered offensive. In Nassau, many groups attract large corporate sponsors. The costumes are really elaborate, the groups practice for months on end for the prizes for the winners are large. But here in Staniel, this was their first Junkanoo, done only for the fun of it.

After all this we still had the ‘Big Race' to compete in on New Years Day. Can you imagine 26 cruising boats, most owners out of sorts with a bad hangover trying to get around a race course. It wasn't pretty, I can tell you. Boats were hitting turning marks, missing marks hitting each other, it was enough for us to just stay out of their way. Our joke was that we were representing the Pipe Creek Yacht Club and had to uphold the club's honor. We finished third even with jerry gas jugs lashed on deck and using our small headsail, but at least we didn't tow our dinghy. No corrected time either as most of the boats were much larger than us. Boat for boat, we beat just about everyone. Joyce drove, Don from Suzannah trimmed the main and I trimmed the jib and called tactics. For more details on the big race.

Great fun, really and a perfect day. And in good style, everyone who raced won a prize; everyone received a hand made woven basket filled with a bottle of rum, home made cake, post cards, candy and two pot holders; all useful stuff for cruisers. Apollo and Atlas have particularly enjoyed playing in the basket. It had been a long time since we'd just gone sailing for sailing sake. We should do it more often I suppose.

In the mist of the awards ceremony that evening, the lights suddenly went out, not just where we were but everywhere on the island. The crowd broke out in a chant of "Y2K, Y2K." We walked back to the dock to find our dinghy in complete darkness, not a light on anywhere in the island. Except for the prices of food and fuel, crime here is almost unknown so we felt perfectly safe. But man was it dark!

A couple more words about Staniel Cay and attractions in the area. As this was the first civilization that we've seen since Nassau , we were eager to get into the settlement for a few fresh provisions and a phone. This we did, but not without the normal headaches, at least for here. Of the three public phones in the entire settlement, one was not working at all. So people line up for the other two (one of which has a terrible buzz and is only marginally working). In fact, we stopped several times to talk to the one and only Tom Neale while he was in line waiting for the phone. For you non-sailors, Tom and his wife are as much of a celebrity as you can get for cruising sailors. Tom and Mel write their own cruising newsletter and Tom has a column every month in Cruising World magazine, often about his experiences in the Bahamas. They both travel quite a bit giving a unique perspective on cruising and living aboard, they having lived aboard for 20 plus years and raised two daughters aboard, who until recently have never lived ashore (the oldest just started college).

Staniel has three small stores that when the mail boat comes in, often have fresh provisions such as bread, eggs and some vegetables. There is the Blue Store, painted bright blue, the Pink Store, bright pink no less, and the Isles General Store where they seem to have just about one of everything, not always the right size mind you. We bought a few things, and I do mean a few and the bill came to $23 including a half gallon of milk that was $4.50. The Staniel Cay Yacht Club sells fuel and water when someone is around to pump it for you. Otherwise, you just have to wait until....that's right...tomorrow. Diesel is $2 per gallon, gas is $4 per gallon and water is 50 cents per gallon. Oh, the price of paradise.

But the one thing that is better than all the rest, the thing that makes Staniel Cay special, the thing that costs nothing, is Thunderball Grotto; a small rocky islet surrounded by a very pretty coral reef that you can actually swim inside of. Made famous by the James Bond movie of the same name, the movie Splash was also filmed here. Once inside, shafts of light penetrate from the holes in the ceiling giving this cave like area a ghoulish blue glow. The fish are plentiful as they are protected here and so friendly that they swim right in your face.

To top off what had already been a fun week, we at long last caught up to our friends from Annapolis on Seaquel. We had last seen George and Julie in Deltaville in the Chesapeake in early October. At that time, they had talked about meeting up in Little Farmer's Cay for New Years. From Staniel, Little Farmers is only 20 or so miles. Thus we thought they would be in the area. So we were glad to see them when they showed up at Staniel on Sunday. We met them and their friends that they had visiting for drinks at the Club Thunderball.

As you can guess, we are really on the slow track now, spending lots of time exploring each new place. We are going to be staying in the central Exumas here for at least the next week or so. Always seems to be plenty of wind, mostly out of an easterly direction 9 days out of 10.

 

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