March 14, 2004
Staniel Cay

Last update had us leaving Nassau, the hub of all arrivals and departure for the Bahamas, and Skip Maciek and the New Recruit had some seriously unknown adventures ahead of them. Things were pretty easy for our first week together in terms of location: we were regular visitors of the local playground for the rich and bored, the massive Atlantis complex on it's own Paradise Island. I kid you not, it has the largest aquarium IN THE WORLD. The place is so big that we could walk around at whim and no one would check up on us. We used their showers and exclusive beach access, watched their free movies every night (remember that Tobi was still de-toxing from Toronto style-life), strolled through their alleys of Gucci and Cartier and Versace as if we belonged there, then come back to our humble cabin to cook some pasta and meat sauce. The funniest thing is, we see them rushing around trying to get the most out of vacations, reddened or salmon-coloured (or deep berry brown if they're really dedicated tanners), getting dressed up because there are always people to impress, wine to drink and food to pig out on... and compared to them we're scruffy bums with nothing but a fat boat and a Coleman (in order of importance), yet we're the happiest kids ever. We all get the same beautiful seaside view.

The second night out from Nassau we stayed in Norman's Cay, and it was more full than usual with about 20 boats spread around the beautiful anchorage. There was a strong current running, so Maciek was doing something I learned very quickly that evening was important, though at the time it seemed to me to be overcautious: checking and rechecking our anchors to see that they were holding. I didn't know that there is a latent terror that strikes at the peace of mind of every sailor, old or young: You drag your anchor and hit someone, and you're in big trouble. Which is why it was rather NOT funny to wake up at midnight, with the sound of our bow crunching into the hull of the neighboring yacht!

Imagine our fright and poor palpitating hearts as we tried to push the many-times-bigger boat away from us, and it wasn't moving. Everybody, including us, thought it was our fault in the first confused minutes under only the light of the moon. As Maciek revved our little outboard motor in reverse, I pushed and pushed to get our bow out of the other boat's belly, but things still weren't moving. It dawned on us after a few minutes that OUR anchor was holding, HE was dragging and about to go further backwards into another boat! He eventually got himself out from in front of us, and we were relieved that it wasn't our fault, but we had a broken running light (something rather important at the front of your boat) and the other boat had some minor gouges in his paint, so we weren't happy with our midnight object lesson.

We explored the Cay the next few days and I was fascinated to find that it had been a drug lord's base of operations and you could still see the bunkhouses, garages, the hangar for the airplane and the runway that is still used to this day. Snorkeling around a downed airplane, we saw reef fish dart about, and later on we sailed about in our dinghy across the bay to made a fire to cook some fish we had caught.

It was just my luck that my first fresh fish experience in the Bahamas involved the horrific and unusually cruel slaying of a small Manta ray (I called him Mannie). We were out one day hunting conch with our new friend Mike, an older and much more Polish version of Maciek, and we're having any success at nabbing a single fish/ Sp when Maciek saw a floating black shape in the water, there was no stopping the hunt.

When Maciek SPEARED the thing through its head twice, raised it up out of the water with 2 spears in it's bleeding body, I was shocked. When he then stabbed it twice in the head, I was appalled. When Mike cut off his tail (so we wouldn't be stung) then cut off both his beautiful flowing wings so it would fit in the bucket, I wanted to ram that spear somewhere! It was still twitching. Now it was in the bucket at my feet and I could see the mouth opening and closing, the poor toothless gums like an old man in his last gasps. At my feet. It was still twitching and I couldn't hold back my revulsion. Mike and Maciek just laughed when they saw my face.

In exchange for the spectacular display of spearing, I got the privilege of SKINNING Mannie back at the boat and trying and prepare him for dinner. It's not that Maciek was sick in the head, I actually wanted to force myself to do it. Then we ate him while looking at the rest of his body lying rubbery and inky in the bucket. It was like some ritual I felt I had to undergo, to prove myself worthy to follow this guy on the great ocean trek. Baby, there are lots of picturesque beaches, but there are certainly some guts required when traveling with the Man with the Spear.

Moving south along the Exumas, we visited Little Cistern, where there was a reef that Maciek remembered being "like discovering Atlantis" on his way down before, so we stopped for the night. There we discovered yellow fire (yes, I know it's yellow but this was a peculiar, different yellow!), the reef that somehow didn't look so good when the water wasn't clear and that Maciek cannot, no matter how well Mike our Polish father explained it, get the conch out of it's shell. He was just about destroyed in nerves and patience at the end of a hour long session butchering 3 hapless sea creatures out of their homes, and it was all I could do to pound the heck out of that meat since it was by then pretty tough and stressed itself! We made a decent conch salad though (I can only give you the recipe if you give me a conch), slept in a tent under the stars and again counted every one of them above us as lucky to be shining down on two such blessed children.

On the way to Warderick Wells, we caught a beautiful 3 foot MahiMahi (or Dorado) and since we were entering park boundaries where it's illegal to catch or possess fish, we had to eat it for every meal to get rid of it. Breakfast was an unusual feast: Creamy Fish wrapped in a Coconut Crepe. Another first for Tobi, and it was, as Maciek puts it, Tobi-liscious. (Second first: Tobi sailing alone on the way over for almost 2 hours while the Captain catnapped below. We didn't capsize.) Then Maciek had an interesting time creatively putting electrical tape together to write our boat's name, in blue and black on the backside of our Fat Lady. It looks very graphic designer-funky. One morning, we sailed to almost the southern most tip of the island in the Lil' Blue (rowboat/sail boat/dinghy), there to hike some treacherous trails for over 3 hours. Visited a genuine Pirates Lair and slept in the hammock there, built a Space-Alien-Cat-Castle in sand, then bounced over limestone rocks to our mortal peril in a trail-less tromp (don't ask me how we lost the well-marked trails) back to dinghy to arrive safe back "home".

Next interesting stop was a small island called Rocky Dundas where there were 2 gorgeous caves w/ stalagmites and stalactites hanging from the roof to the floor. We were awed by it and stopped to long to take some pictures, scaring a group of older people coming in. I had a happy Mermaid time swimming around the island while Maciek rowed and got a nice coral scraping on my leg, which after 3 weeks still hasn't healed (downside to being in the salt water constantly). We cast off and set sail for Staniel Cay, wind at our backs and going strong.

We explored the settlement of Staniel Cay which was the prettiest thing, with houses all painted in purple, red, pink, blue and yellow, nothing was left plain. There was exactly 3 grocery stores, the White, Blue and Pink, with varying degrees of stock. They were smaller than most corner stores in Canada. We bought some carrots, 2 apples, cookies and some hamburger meat at extortionist rates, being very modest shoppers. Saw a shark in the docking area. Getting back to our anchored boat with the groceries, we COULDN'T row back across, the current was like a river and the wind against us. We lost ground for about 15 min, inch by painful inch (I couldn't do anything but watch Maciek's rippling muscles work those paddles) until someone had mercy on us and gave us a tow back to our boat. Although we were right by the Thunderbolt Cave, which is featured in the James Bond movie of the same name, because of the wind, we couldn't get to see the cave. Oh well, got to leave something for the future. On southward towards Georgetown....

(T)