The Voyage of Spectacle

After several long weeks of hard work and trying to anticipate every conceivable contingency, we started our adventure off with a bang … a 1 hour 10 minutes flight on an eight seater Cessna prop plane!  The good folks at Yellow Air Taxi took really good care of us to include accomodating our whopping 180 pounds of luggage!

Andy had taken Yellow Air Taxi from Great Abaco back to Ft. Lauderdale once already, but I didn’t really know what to expect.  The cockpit is several feet away allowing passengers (particularly those nervous about flying) to fixate on the various known and unknown gauges and blinking lights.  I found myself concentrating rather heavily on fuel, oil pressure, and radar … all conveniently clustered together!  After awhile however, I was able to relax and take in some truly beautiful scenery.  More Pictures

After several days of boat projects and just getting settled, we decided to have a tourist day.  We are in the Bahamas after all and we had yet to see any good beach time. 

Treasure Cay is 30 miles northeast of Marsh Harbour on a peninsula of Great Abaco (not its own island as Cay would suggest).  Unfortunately, the scooter rental establishment denied us scooter rentals due to our lack of a motorcycle driver’s certification, so we opted for a compact car for the day.  As if the late 80′s Chevy Citation wasn’t scary enough, Bahamians drive on the left, and rather crazily and lawlessly to boot.  However, most cars are not outfitted to be drive-on-the-left cars … that is to say, the steering wheel is also on the left which makes for an incredibly difficult driving situation (i.e. imagine trying to pass the slower car in front of you on a two lane road, just checking for oncoming traffic is harrowing!).  Luckily for me (the designated driver in foreign lands), a stark reminder was plastered in full view.  It came in handy several times when the compulsion to veer right was strong!

Also luckily for me, the drive itself to Treasure Cay was terribly uninteresting (and would’ve been awful on motor scooters by the way) so I was left to concentrate on staying on the left.  We passed a huge gulag-looking school, a burning landfill that looked like it belonged somewhere like Mogadishu, and a spooky cemetary with its equally spooky adjacent shanty town.  And then voila … the paradise called Treasure Cay!

 After clearing the guard gate, we drove to the top of the peninsula through small streets lined with beautiful homes.  We parked and headed out to a beach so picturesque, it was almost corny … crystal blue water, powder white sand, not a soul besides us, late afternoon sun and billowy clouds floating by in a cool ocean breeze … okay, that’s sufficiently corny now!  More Pictures

After about a week, we are starting to get settled into our new boat life but, alas, we have yet to sail anywhere!  It’s a good idea to acclimate to marina life considering only about one-third of our trip is at sea anyhow.

The Abacos are located in the northeast of the Bahamian archipelago (175 miles east of Palm Beach) in a 140-mile curve around the east of Grand Bahama.  The population of the Abacos is 11,000, and Marsh Harbour (located on a north-facing cove about midway down Great Abaco) is the third largest town in the Bahamas (after Freeport and Nassau).  A popular area with sailors, the Abacos are home to about half of the 60 marinas in the Bahamas.  Many of the cays in the surrounding area were settled by Loyalists after the American Revolution.  In 1973, the Abacos launched a fairly strong, but ultimately unsuccessful, movement to remain part of Britain rather than declaring independence with the rest of the Bahamas.

Marsh Harbour has been an excellent place to begin our journey.  The town is just big enough to have a lot of resources and services.  For instance, the eight restaurants within walking or short cab ride distance have been consistently pretty good (Andy begins the full-fledged restaurant reviews shortly).  We visited two different grocery stores to investigate the eventual boat provisioning opportunities, and we were pleasantly surprised both in availability and affordability.  One of the two stores is a Costco-type warehouse situation where we purchased gobs of non-perishables, soda, and paper products for about $350.  And I’m talking gobs of stuff … an avalanche of pancake mix, a dozen batches of brownie mix, granola bars, a dozen boxes of mac n’ cheese, etc.  The other store is a proper grocery store with produce, butcher, deli, bakery, the whole shebang – it could be a Ralphs in Pasadena.  The decent restaurants and proper grocery stores have been quite comforting for me since I can be quite finicky about food (for those who know me well, stop snickering).

The Conch Inn Marina has been a welcome first stop as well.  The facilities are clean and well managed … also a comforting revelation for me … and of course, there’s the spectacular view.

Andy’s middle brother, Erik, arrived Tuesday, December 12, and we are so excited to have our very first Spectacle visitor!

On Thursday, after a leisurely breakfast, the three of us walked east from the Conch Inn toward the far point of Marsh Harbour, past the ferry dock and out nearly to the end of the point, past some beautiful homes and beaches.  Then we hopped on the 12:15 ferry to Hope Town, Elbow Cay (about 4 miles away and a 20 minute ride).  Six miles long and one quarter mile wide, Elbow Cay is surrounded by a huge barrier reef and has a protected natural harbor.  Hope Town is very charming with clapboard houses, white picket fences, petunia-adorned window boxes, and small winding pedestrian streets.  We wandered aimlessly for awhile, had a mediocre-bordering-on-bad lunch, and ended up at the famous lighthouse (that’s right … To The Lighthouse with Ms. Woolf).  Built in the 1830’s, the Hopetown lighthouse alleviated the treachery of navigating through the many shoals and reefs in the area, not to mention providing a fabulous view of the town and surrounding cays.  More Pictures 

On Sunday, December 17, the three of us ventured out to Great Guana Cay for a visit to the infamous Nippers and its weekly Sunday pig roast. 

As beach bars go, it’s pretty tough to top Nippers, and getting there is half the fun.  After the ferry (about 30 minutes), one follows the signs on a Candyland-like adventure — turn left at the fence, right at the graveyard (complete with picture of the grim reaper on the gate), left at the rainbow-colored bulldozer, steer clear of the poisonwood tree, up and over the hill and you are there (we managed to avoid Molasses Swamp). 

Nippers itself is a multicolored, multi-tiered, cacophony of wood planking and American tourist jackassery.  It appeared to be South Carolina day at Nippers, as evidenced by the number of sun-burned necks protruding from Clemson and University of South Carolina tanktops. 

The pig roast was pretty good (alas, the pork was already carved and in trays, so there were no porcine rotisserie displays), the “Nipper” (a frozen rum punch concoction) proved excellent, the weather was perfect, and a good time was had by all.  We took a long walk along the beautiful beach, returned for a final round, and got ready to head home.

Just as we were closing out, Erik attracted … well, let’s just call it what was … a gay stalker.  This guy tried everything – herd separation tactics, inviting the three of us to dinner, etc.  He even invited us to stay at his apartment.  This dude was PERSISTENT.  He was accompanied by one of his co-workers (reasonably intoxicated, not particularly annoying) and a fall-down, Stacey Toran-drunk Australian (there’s always at least one wherever you go) who was some sort of boat captain/crewman.

The six of us sauntered back to the ferry dock (past the graveyard, the rainbow bulldozer…) to await the last ferry of the day.  Shortly thereafter, a very distraught woman holding a very small plastic bag arrived at the dock.  As we came to learn, she was holding her friend’s fingers.  We were told that the friend was building her own house on Great Guana and was the victim of a table-saw accident. Apparently, the owner of the fingers had already been transported to Marsh Harbour, en route to Nassau, inexplicably sans digits. 

Fall-down drunk Australian sprang into action.  Apparently, he’d come over to Great Guana in some sort of small powerboat that was affiliated with the bigger boat of which he was captain/crewman.  He dashed (ok, staggered) off to retrieve his powerboat so that the fingers could be sped to Marsh Harbour. Gay Stalker, apparently in a hurry to get home, suggested that we all hop on the boat.  Needless to say, we declined – we’re not getting on a speedboat, at night, in a very tricky harbor, with a fall-down drunk Aussie driver and the gay stalker co-pilot.  Equally needless to say, the gay stalker then changed his mind and decided to wait with us, and off roared the speedboat at triple the recommended speed. Yikes.  All I could think is that it takes a true friend to hop on drunken Aussie’s speedboat to make a nighttime delivery of your severed fingers.  More Pictures