Our Great Adventure : The Thorny Path

We left Georgetown and headed to Conception Island - another Bahamas National Trust Park. It was a beautiful, calm, quiet, small island boasting Tropical Long Tailed Birds. The birds looked a little bit like a small seagull with a 1.5ft tail! We walked around the island and scored a milk crate that had washed up on shore that we can use for storage in our dingy (it's a very glamorous lifestyle). We also found a small mangrove pond and salt river that meandered through some small salt ponds - these were packed full of marine life: green turtles, manta rays, nurse sharks, bone fish and lots of other colourful fish.

Salt River on Conception Island

From there we headed to Rum Cay another small island, but this one inhabited by some of the most lovely people we have ever met. We pulled up to the beach in our dingy and a man rode over to see if we needed help getting it out of the water and onto the beach. Everyone we met there went out of their way to come over and talk to us. Sadly their beautiful island was hit quite hard by Hurricane Joaquin this past September. Many roofs were covered in US AID tarps and several homes and shops were completely levelled. The beach was wrecked and most of the sand was dragged out to sea, they also lost their dock making supplies and travel harder for them. Despite all this they all said how “blessed” they felt since no one was injured.

Shop Destroyed by Hurricane Joaquin

While we were walking around the town we passed the school during recess and all 9 students were out playing frisbee and excitedly but shyly ran over to wave to us. We also met a woman in her 70s and her mum in her 90s who were chipping away at rocks by hand to make gravel to repair their home. Even though it was hot and humid and the labour was back breaking they waved us over and chatted with us for a while. They asked if we were on the yacht in the harbour and said they have hardly had any cruisers this year because of the damage from the hurricane. We asked here if there was anyone on the island who made bread so we could buy some - she said they had made a loaf yesterday and offered to give us a few slices! We were so struck by the spirit and generosity of everyone on the island - people who had lost so much and in some cases everything were so happy and willing to share what they had.

Miss Wilson

Many even commented on how many nice second hand clothes they received from Nassau - now that is a "glass half full" mentality if I have ever seen it. We continued on and met Miss Dolores Wilson a spritely 84 year old bar and restaurant owner. Most of the bar was covered in sand from the hurricane and the door was missing its glass but she invited us in and we sat with her and had a beer while she told us her life story. She has written two books and is working on her third - all three are about her life and the history of the island. She is really good friends with Sir Sidney Poitier who writes the forewords for her books! She told us a little about when the hurricane hit: everyone met in the church and was planning on waiting it out there until water started coming in the church. At which point it was decided to move everyone to the health centre. Dolores, who had just had major abdominal surgery in Nassau, was having some trouble getting into the truck with all the wind. She said the local “boys” had to carry her on and off the truck and into the Health Centre. She said they still remind her of that in order to try to get some free rum at her bar! She has certainly had a most interesting life and actually had eyes that sparkled when she told some of her more mischievous stories. I asked her if they still had the salt ponds for collecting sea salt and she said not like there were before Joaquin hit but that she had been out earlier collecting some salt and gave us a bag of the sea salt she collected - it’s delicious!

House after hurricane on Rum Cay

Trees uprooted from hurricane

We headed out the next morning because there was some strong wind coming and we needed somewhere with good protection - we sailed to Crooked Island and then onto Acklins Island. There were some true “out islands” - we didn’t see anyone the whole time we were on Acklins and only two fishermen at Crooked. On our sail across the Bight of Acklins the water was completely flat and only 9ft deep the entire way so we could clearly see the bottom and it was littered with huge starfish the entire way.

Green clouds in the Bight of Acklins

About halfway across the bight the wind died and we were sweltering hot so we dropped the anchor and went for a dip! Gotta love sailing somewhere you can drop the anchor at anytime and go swimming!

Sadly Acklins and Crooked were both hit hard by the hurricane and up to 70% of the island was submerged. We ended up spending 7 days there riding out some fierce wind. The swells were so strong on the first night that our poor ancient old snubber snapped - took us a few minutes to work out what the god-awful smacking sound was (it was the anchor chain bouncing and smacking the boat). We were able to climb out onto the pulpit and jimmy a replacement. We were planning on moving southeast along the Bight since part of the reason we chose that location to ride out the weather was the ability to still move around as being stuck on the boat gets hard on the head. Sadly that didn’t happen. We tried to go ashore one day but the waves were so large and the beach was wiped out by Hurricane Joaquin so we had nowhere to land the dingy - that was the only time we ended up leaving the boat in almost 10 days - we were pacing like caged animals by the end of it. There were two reasons we didn’t move onto other anchorages in the Bight - it is charted as quite shallow and was all charted pre-hurricane so we were worried that the sandbars would have shifted and we certainly didn’t want to run aground with no one around if we needed assistance. The second reason was when we turned our engine on to move the boat to a slightly different location our fuel pump wouldn’t turn off - it took the whole day of trouble shooting to realize the problem was our fuel bowl where the filter sits was so caked with crud that there wasn’t enough room for fuel! Of course a special kit is needed to disassemble and reassemble to bowl and we don’t have it - lucky a filter change did the trick for now.

After the winds died down we sailed it to Salina Point at the south end of Acklins. We went for a swim off the boat and decided to check out the shore. As we approached the shore in our dingy we could see a commotion in the water near the shore where we were planning on snorkelling. It was sharks wrestling with their prey!! We could see two dorsal fins speeding through the water - one looked like a nurse shark so we weren’t too phased but as we got closer the very distinct crescent tail of a bull shark thrashed through the water as it attacked something (maybe the nurse shark). We were getting ready to reroute the dingy when a massive bull shark starts to surface right next to our inflatable boat - we sped back to the boat and made a G&T and said no thank you to snorkelling or going ashore.

At this point the winds had not been cooperating with our plan to get to Turks and Caicos and so we had to motor more than we wanted. Unfortunately, none of the islands we were visiting sell fuel after all the damage post hurricane. We spent the better part of one day trying to come up with a plan on how we could sail as much as possible in the direction of Turks and Caicos but to somewhere with fuel: Matthew Town, Great Inagua ended up being our destination - a rather unlikely route to Turks and Caicos and we were beginning to understand why it is called “The Thorny Path”. The prevailing winds are East winds and Turks and Caicos is East of the Bahamas so getting there is a real thorn in your side. So we did the 100 nautical mile 18 hour sail to Great Inagua. It was a beautiful night for a sail - we had 18knots of wind and so were able to sail the entire way there. We had smooth seas and shooting stars and a spectacular moonset, sunset and sunrise.

Matthew Town, Great Inagua

Our first order of business in Matthew Town was to track down some fuel. The town's economy is based on sea salt and there is a massive Morton's Salt plant there and hires a lot of people. Therefore the town has more money than a lot of the islands we visited and is more built up. The harbour is under some major construction and there are diggers and construction vehicles everywhere. We pulled into the harbour in our dingy as there is no place to dock the sailboat - there is just a concrete wall with a narrow inlet completely unprotected from the ocean and boats have been stuck in there and unable to get out with the waves - so this meant we were going to have to jerry can fill the tanks again! We drove around the small harbour looking for a place to tie the dingy but there was nothing - there were a bunch of guys on a fishing boat in the harbour so we asked them where to tie it but they didn’t speak English. Another dingy was puling in so we asked them and they said the only place was to tie to some rebars on the concrete wall and then to scale the wall - perfect. The 6ft concrete wall was crumbling in places exposing the interior rebars - it was these we were able to curl our toes and fingers around and haul ourselves up the face of the wall - no easy feat I assure you. Once on the top there was an garbage disposal (much needed as were carrying around 3 weeks of trash), bathrooms, a shower, and an “administrative office”. The office was able to tell me where we could get some diesel and also informed me the showers were free - she laughed at me when I asked how much they cost: “They’re free man”! We found the diesel man who said to bring our jerry cans and to leave them at the gas station and he would take them to the dock to fill them but that he would need some time. We said no problem and headed into town to get some basics and some water and to explore. There was a Flamingo tour that took people to the centre of the island where there are small ponds and pools with shrimp that attract the legendary pink birds. We really wanted to do the tour but the diesel man still hadn’t surfaced and fuel was our priority. In hindsight there was plenty of time to go on the tour since buddy didn’t get the fuel until 6hours later ( the diesel tank was at the dock which was maybe 60 steps from the gas station - still not sure what the hold up was - oh Island time!).

Even though we missed the Flamingos we saw a few huge bright green parrots flying around the island. We asked where to go for lunch and the lady we asked said “oh I’ll drive you somewhere” - she left work and drove us to a restaurant! And thank god she did as there was no signage anywhere. James had fried chicken and fries and I had fried shrimp and fries - that and fried pork were the only times on the “menu”. The butterfly shrimp was the best I have ever had - these Flamingoes are onto something. After lunch we were finally able to get our diesel but were not too excited about trying to scamper down the flat wall face with 5gallon jugs in one hand. The boat full of fishermen that we asked about the dingy dock were out on their boat and saw us standing on the top of the wall with our dingy below - this created quite the fuss! They all came out and were gesturing to us and whistling - I think they were a little impressed we were able to scale the wall and saw our predicament in trying to get back down with the fuel. Turns our they were Haitian so through a combo of my rusty French and their creole French we devised a plan to get our fuel back onto the dingy. We tossed them our painter line and they dragged our dingy to the front of their boat. We then climbed over a barge and a tug boat and onto their boat where we dangled off the side and dropped down into the dingy - since the fuel man lent us 2 more jerry cans we only had to do this 3 times instead of 6! After our last diesel run we were only too happy to scale the wall to a free shower!!!

Free Dock Shower

There was no handle and no shower head and yet it was still pure bliss after a day walking around in the blazing heat and climbing all over flighty boats and walls.

We sailed to Little Inagua the next day to break up the trip to Turks and Caicos. Little Inagua isn’t charted in our chartbook so we were a little apprehensive about pulling into shore there to anchor. We asked around Matthew Town and people felt sure that the west side was sandy and that boats did stop there and Google Earth confirmed it. We were the only boat at Little Inagua but even without a chart it was no problem getting in and makes for two nice shorter sails instead of a long one to Turks and Caicos.

Our lasting impressions of the Bahamas; a country full of smiling, genuine, caring, thoughtful people. I’m going to miss being called “baby, darling, friend, mate, man”, being offered rides by complete strangers and being spoken to or waved at by everyone we see. We’re also going to miss having beaches to ourselves and miles and miles of clear blue water. It’s going to be so hard to say goodbye to the Bahamas but we’re excited to meet up with friends in Turks and Caicos Islands and to continue travelling and exploring.