In the Bahamas, Baby!

We made it. A plan that was hatched over six years ago has finally come to fruition. And I gotta tell ya, it feels great!

Our last week in the US was spent in a slip in Fort Lauderdale. We met up with my sister-in-law Star (from my first marriage) and her family who live in Miami Lakes, just north of Miami. Star has been an important presence in our lives for years, particularly for my son Dewey who lost his father at the tender age of twelve. Dewey’s Christmas vacations since then have all been spent in Florida, and Star has always put in a giant effort to keep in touch with us. I couldn’t be more grateful. So when Star and David invited us to attend their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration, we had to include Miami in our itinerary!

 

Dewey walking the bride down the aisle!

Star planned a major shindig at their waterfront home, with a white dress and a renewal of vows with David, followed by dinner and dancing. We had a blast. The only regret on my part was that, as one tends to do when having fun, I forgot to take any pictures. I had to borrow from Star’s Facebook page to include any photos.

The morning after the wedding, I took both Rick and Dewey to the airport; Dewey for a flight back to Baltimore, and Rick for a flight to New York. Rick was involved in the making of “Wormwood” on Netflix, an Errol Morris six-part documentary/dramatization of the 1950’s death of Frank Olson, father of Rick’s longtime friend Eric Olson. Rick makes a few short appearances in a couple of episodes, speaking primarily about Eric’s “collage method” of psychotherapy that first brought Eric and Rick together in Boston forty years ago. There was a private viewing of the whole four hour work in New York, followed by a reception, and we both thought it was important for Rick to be there. So he met Peter Sarsgaard who stars in the film… (I asked him if he met Maggie Gyllenhaal who was reported to be there as well. Rick is being rather evasive on that one.)

I was left on the boat, running a zillion and one errands (oh boy, Boothby, do you owe me one).

It’s kind of amazing how difficult it is to leave the country for an extended period. Extra months worth of prescriptions need to be approved by the insurance company, the cell phone plan needs to be changed so our phones will work in the Bahamas, we need a ship station license to use our VHF radio in foreign waters, we need customs papers for the boat, and on and on. Then we have to provision the boat with food (and, who are we kidding, lots and lots of booze), and of course find room for it all aboard. The upside for me is that after three days of numerous trips around town, I now know Ft. Lauderdale like the back of my hand!

Once Rick is back on station we are able to work twice as fast, but we still miss our Friday morning weather window for crossing the Gulf Stream. It’s a ten-hour passage, and the trick is to avoid arriving in a foreign port after dark, meaning you need to shove off first thing in the morning. It looks probable that there won’t be another good window (favorable winds) for some time, possibly weeks. So we make the unconventional choice to take an afternoon nap and make the crossing overnight, arriving sometime just after dawn. The guide books don’t recommend it, particularly on a first time crossing. But hey, what do they know?

We have been on the flat waters of the ICW for a very long trek, and going out in the open ocean for the first time in six weeks means probable sea-sickness for this first mate. So I slap on a patch and fall pretty immediately into scopolamine oblivion. By the time I come to in the wee hours of the morning, Rick has gotten us across the Gulf Stream all by himself in the dark. There are basically two big dangers with this crossing; the unbelievably strong current that can set you way off course, and the overwhelming boat traffic. Ships and other boat are lit of course, but distances can be much more difficult to judge at night. Rick is pretty experienced at sailing through shipping channels in the dark, but even so, this trip was especially nervy. He tells me that at one point our little boat was in the middle of four city-sized cruise ships, apparently oblivious to our miniscule presence. Thankfully, he could see them plain as day; they were lit up like Christmas trees.

We pulled in to North Bimini as the sun was rising. I was wide awake and ready for an adventure, but Rick was clearly not himself, having been on station all night. We had a little scare coming in to a slip, misjudging the strength of the current and getting stuck broadside on the outer pilings. We scraped into the end of the dock with a sickening squeal. Yeah. Won’t do it that way again. Luckily no damage was done, and the dock hand helped us get into the slip with extra line and muscle. I couldn’t understand a word he said to us in his thick island accent. But we sure were grateful. Thank you Brown’s Marina!

Rick slept while I walked in to Alice Town, a sleepy one road hamlet with colorful houses and a handful of funky little shops, bars and restaurants.  I met a number of locals walking also, but most people were riding golf carts, the most prevalent mode of transportation here. Ernest Hemingway was a regular visitor to Alice Town back in the thirties, but his notorious hangout is now just a pile of rubble indicated by a faded sign. Most of the town seems pretty rundown, and I can’t tell if the boarded up windows and dilapidated buildings are from recent hurricane activity, or rather from a longer history of poverty and neglect. Most likely both.

 I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t quite daring enough to try the fare at the local conch shacks, but I loved the enormous piles of shells discarded nearby. I’ve always thought that conch shells were prized objects that carried high price tags in Floridian souvenir shops. Here they are so numerous and commonplace that they end up in giant trash heaps.

Wait - how did that get here?

After one night in the slip, we moved on to anchor on our own at Gun Cay. We originally anchored on the East side of the island, but after a night of rolling back and forth, I insisted we move to the aptly named Honeymoon Harbor which is beautiful and better protected from wind and current. The water is an impossible shade of blue here. You know, that aqua color that is used to line swimming pools, a color that until now I never believed existed in nature. I could just sit and look at that water all day long.

We try out our new snorkeling equipment for the first time, and find ourselves only an arm’s length away from an eight foot shark! He is missing a large chunk out of one side of his mouth, giving him a distinctively gruesome look. Rick tells me that he is a “nurse shark,” perfectly harmless, but I still scream into my snorkel as he swims by. Apparently this particular fish is well known around here. The French guy in the next boat over calls him “Marcel”.

Rays come right up to you, looking for handouts.

By the way, “Cay” is pronounced “Key” by the locals, and “Kay” by the tourists. So do we try to fit in as people who belong here, knowing full well that we won’t be fooling anyone, or do we immediately identify ourselves as interlopers? “Key” or “Kay”?

Who cares – it’s the Bahamas, mon! Say whatever comes to mind and go have a pina colada!