The Big Blow

There's a saying in the Bahamas, "If it blows for one, it blows for two." How precise. The cold fronts have finally gathered enough momentum to make it this far south, much to our dismay. These things are really no fun at all. Starting to understand why they drink so much rum in the Bahamas!

But the week began quietly enough. We left our Pipe Creek anchorage with Changing Channels, they for Staniel Cay and we south for Black Point. The large anchorage here offers great protection from northeast and south but is wide open to all westerly directions. With settled tradewinds weather for a few days, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit. This thriving little settlement of about 300 welcomes visitors with open arms. As we walked down the half paved bit of roadway, the Bahamians literally came out of their homes to welcome us. In front of many of the homes, they were steadily working away with palm fronds, weaving strips that would later become all manner of straw products, baskets, hats and the like - most of which is shipped to Nassau. From the anchorage, we could hear the chorus of kindergarten children singing nursery rhymes familiar to us from our childhood. Then we met Willie Rolle.

The Rolle family name is wide spread throughout the islands and according to Willie, most are related in some way. As we walked along, Willie insisted on showing us his ‘garden'. We were game so we followed along to find a most unusual collection of natural sculptures. The sculptures as he called them are odd shaped roots that he collected from trees in the nearby woods. He said that he would go into the woods and like seeing images in the clouds, see similar images in the roots. Then he would bring them back and mount them in some position his yard. We thought that the sculpture garden was the sum total of Willie's "Garden of Eden," but we were wrong. For behind Willie's house, he had planted an eclectic collection of fruit trees and vegetables, seemingly growing right up from the rocky yard. Bananas, grapefruit, papaya, mangos, oranges, almonds, peas, corn, tomatoes, peppers, and many that we did not know, all grown from the seeds of fruit that he bought to eat. He claimed that the natives made fun of him 30 years ago when he started his garden, but now he says that they come to him for help in starting their own garden.

Willie also showed us his goats that he keeps for "when he gets hungry." We followed along into his home to see pictures of his children and ‘grands' as he called them. Inside was two small rooms, comfortably furnished, that comprised the living, sleeping, dining, and cooking areas. No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no windows or doors. But he said he suffered little during the recent hurricanes, only losing a shingle or two. He said he had plans to add on, to install indoor plumbing and electricity but that seems most unlikely given the pace of life in the islands. The settlement of Black Point was just electrified only as recent as 1994. We started thinking that perhaps it would cost about 3,000 dollars to install power. With little in the way of work to earn or save, that sum probably seems incomprehensible to Willie.

But our time at Black Point was cut short by the threat of bad weather. After some thought, we decided to hustle back to Pipe Creek to ride out our first really bad cold front. Little did we know how bad it could get. You see, there are few really good places that offer anything like all around protection. On top of that, the only things separating us from the ocean are small rocky islands, no taller that 50 or 80 feet. Further, most of the places that offer any kind of reasonable protection are plagued by strong reversing currents. All told, it quickly became rather uncomfortable, if not downright dangerous for some. Those some include anybody caught out or caught unprotected from the building winds. The evening the front came through, tragedies did occur that will affect many of the islanders. On this one day, the Bahamians lost two mailboats to the storm. Everyone was rescued but now the islanders served by the mail boats are at a loss to say how they will now get supplies and mail. We also came to hear that since these small settlements don't have any banking facilities, some lost cash deposits that were on their way to Nassau banks as well as outgoing mail and other items headed to Nassau.

While we were in Black Point, we saw the mailboat, the Etienne & Cephas come and go for their weekly mail and supplies delivery. At about 90 feet in length, and maybe 25 feet on the beam, she wasn't much to look at; a bit rode hard a put away wet. From there, she traveled to Little Farmers Cay, discharged her cargo and began the return trip to Nassau. It was here that she foundered, about 25 miles southeast of Nassau. We heard the whole rescue operation on the radio which involved the US Coast Guard, the Bahamian Search and Rescue and some local boats. One of the local boats that went out in the storm was a 31 foot open fishing boat that later that had to be rescued as well. Earlier that day, another mailboat The Cat Island Express also foundered and went down, all rescued there as well. While this was going on, we were dealing with the storm in our own way.

The day began sunny and clear, with only a hint of a building northerly breeze. We were tucked in a slot between the large cay to our west and some small rocky cays to our east. Because of the current, we set two anchors, one up current and one down current in what is called a Bahamian moor. As the dark clouds approached late afternoon, we received reports of winds to the north exceeding 40 knots. And soon, these winds were upon us, heeling us over and straining to the limit of our anchoring gear. The slot we were in with four other boats was only about 200 feet wide, stretching along a northwest to southeast direction. Thus when the wind came hard out of the north to northeast, we were pushed back to within two boat lengths of the rocks behind. And believe me, they seemed a whole lot closer. When the current changed instead of us being pushed to the rocks, Watermark lay uncomfortably with the wind and waves abeam which caused the boat to lean over 5 to 10 degrees to one side. The noise from the wind reached such a pitch that we could hear little else and had to raise our voices inside the boat just to hear ourselves talk.

Of course, during all of this havoc which lasted for the next two days, we could sleep little and we thought often about the worst, especially at night. Truly if either one of our anchors had let go, we would have had about 30 seconds before we hit the rocks. We figured that this was going to happen so I started thinking about just how we were going to get ourselves and the cats off the boat when it did. For two days we did little but commiserate with others on the radio as it was too rough to get off. On the second day when the wind had settle down to about 30-35 knots, I worked a puzzle while Joyce tried to read and use the computer.

One of the ironies of it all is that we would have been fine in Black Point. Normally the front starts with winds building out of the southeast then going west and then blowing hard from northwest. Thus Black Point seemed to be a poor choice as it's completely open to directions from northwest to southwest. But on this front, the winds started out of the north then clocked around during the next two days to the east. When the winds finally went east, we lost our protection from the low rocky islands and finally had to leave with the wind still blowing around 30 knots. No fun, no fun.

We traveled only about 5 miles over to the neat little island of Sampson Cay, which not only offered good easterly protection but held our friends on Feng Shui. As the winds died down, we along with Brian and Susan on Starlight made our way to Feng Shui for a pot luck dinner and an ample serving of rum! But news of the next approaching strong cold front has us nervous and planning where we will ride it out. All this after 6 weeks of only one minor cold front, we are finally seeing what things can be like at their worst. Paying our dues so to speak. Our temps are down to the low seventies and that seems cold to us. But we hear that it won't get out of the twenties tomorrow in Baltimore so all told, things aren't so bad now are they?