Update – March 30, 2022
Ok, so you know its been awhile since you’ve posted anything when you have to look up your password to your own website! I know, I’m a slacker; no excuses really but fun, friends, crummy internet connections and a bunch of sailing seemingly got in the way. So what I’m gonna do is to make smaller posts and backdate them so they will appear in proper order. A brief synopsis as it were. Brief?!? Me?!? I’ll try.
Back in the USofA
March 30, 2022; 0835. Ft Pierce, FL
Stateside; mixed bag of emotions. From crystal clear incredible variations of blue water, pristine white sand beaches, low key Cay’s, smiling relaxed people to murky water, ok beaches, intense traffic speed & noise (think drag racing revving on a Saturday nite type noise), MANY people running around like the world is going to end if they do not get past you in the grocery store to get to the cereal. The culture and lifestyle differences between the Bahamas and the US are pretty dramatic. It also signifies a semblance of an ‘end’ to our 2021/2022 sailing adventure, which also brings mixed emotions. More on that later.
Our return trip took us from the Exuma Cay’s Land & Sea Park to the West side of New Providence Island to a bay on the east side of Great Harbor Cay to the Great Harbor Cay Marina where we cleared out of the Bahamas. Then an overnite passage to Ft Pierce FL. All in all good. A couple of hiccups en route: 1) had a wonderful downwind run en route to GHC 1 day w/our whisker pole attached to the headsail (keeps the sail from flapping and snapping in wave action). The next day, something was ‘bunged’ up raising the pole and we should’ve listened to our gut and not forced it. We didn’t so the pole end broke off and chaos ensued w/the pole swinging around freely yet attached to the sail on the front of the boat. Some screaming occurred while managing to get it down. While at the marina Mr. Fixit got it repaired utilizing just about every tool on the boat; D’s ability scares me sometimes! 2) Midway thru our overnite crossing, D was on his shift, I was ‘resting’; the RPM’s of the engine (calm seas=motor) went substantially down. Springing up into the cockpit I asked if all was OK; response, ‘just trying to not run into the Queen Mary 2 or the cruise ship 3 nm to her south’. I look around, seeing nothing; ‘how far away are they?’ ’10 miles out.’ One needs to plan that far in advance because large ships are unlikely and generally unable to change their courses or speeds, and they were coming straight for us. In fact our electronics tell us that within X minutes, they will be Y feet away from you. We couldn’t divert our course fast enough or far enough to avoid them. So slowed down for the 1 1/2 hours until they went by. And in this case D expertly threaded the needle between the 2 ships. BTW the QM2 is NOT a cruise ship but is referred to as an ‘ocean liner’. They are built to go from point A to point B generally covering long distances at sea. They are built sturdier and heavier, w/tapered bows and deeper keels for more stability.
Will hang out in Ft Pierce for a few days to let some unsettled weather pass thru.
Bahamas & the World – Plastic & Garbage
So now down to the ugly side of it all as was previously promised. Garbage, most of which is plastic. This picture is of a beach on the sound side of the Exumas by Oven Rock. It does not portray all that was on this small beach as well that was in the scrub surrounding the beach. Bread crates, packing material, fish nets-lots of fish nets, fishing floats, flip flops, barrettes, buckets, milk jugs, plastic baggies, plastic bottles, plastic grocery bags, pipes, tubing, cans, plastic plates and utensils, one could go on & on. If that wasn’t disturbing enough as you sifted thru the sand there were small, smaller and tiny pieces of plastic. The sign below In the Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park states that ingesting plastic garbage killed the 52 ft sperm whale. Very poignant.
And this from the Olive Ridley Project out of the UK and focusing on the Indian Ocean.
And this news link from a study published in the journal Environment International.
And this by no means is exclusive to the Bahamas, it is rampant around the world and getting worse. Only if you live under a rock have you not heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is roughly 620,000 square miles or about the size of Texas. About 4-14 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans every year and it makes up 80% of all marine debris. And as plastic degrades into smaller pieces of microplastics they begin to sink into the deep-sea sediment. A study done in 2014 found that about 4 billion microscopic plastic fibers could be littering each square mile of deep-sea sediment.
In our sailing journey we have seen plastic & garbage in the water just about each & every day. The most prevalent? Pieces of fishing nets, plastic bottles and Mylar or latex party balloons w/strings. The nets and balloons can be deadly as they entangle wildlife in them and the mylar may cause electrical shorts when they come in contact w/power lines. A master’s student @ the University of Michigan is working on calling attention to problems that balloons cause primarily in the Great Lakes. On our sail from Ft Pierce to St Augustine, FL we saw at least 6 balloons in the water along w/other garbage.
So what can be done about it? There are organizations that are creating ways or huge machines to ‘eat’ the plastic in the oceans or small machines to recycle them into jewelry or art, building businesses for small island nations and creating income. This is unfortunately after the fact and will not be able to keep up w/the amount of plastic going into rivers, lakes and oceans. It all begins w/us my friends. We HAVE to wean ourselves away from single use plastics, period! Seems like a no brainer but it’s a lot harder than one thinks. D & I finally got it down to ask for ‘no straw please’ or ‘no cover please’ for our drinks or coffee. If we forget to bring our canvas bags to the store for groceries we go back and get them versus getting plastic bags. We drink our water out of reusable metal containers versus plastic bottles. We take mesh bags to get produce in. We are far from perfect but are trying to make a conscious decision every time we buy, use, need something. If everyone would give this a go it might make a beginning dent in the outflow of plastics.
Ramping it up a notch one can contact manufacturing companies, restaurants, grocery stores, urging them to focus on not making, using or purchasing products packaged in plastic.
Or take to social media questioning the reasoning for massive quantities of garbage. This is something we have done recently. There is a certain establishment in Georgetown that is very popular. We were walking down the beach from this establishment and noticed a HUGE, and I mean HUGE pile of garbage. A mountain of garbage bags, beginning to tear open; an equally large pile of glass beer bottles, the lower ones breaking under the total weight of the pile; all located less than 200ft from the water. We were appalled! D lurking as me (he does this to follow the Tartan 4400 group sharing advice, etc) on Facebook asked the question “Does anyone know what is up w/the pile of garbage behind this place?” An unsatisfactory response led him to state “us cruisers are causing this pile”. OMG, one would have thought we drove a dagger into the heart of every cruiser. “We don’t dump our garbage there, we know better”, “It’s the places fault, that’s what they do” and some other dicier ones. Ok then, my dander was up and I totally chose the high road in the responses; stating that no insinuation was made that cruisers were dumping their garbage there BUT if one patronized the place one WAS contributing to the pile of garbage. And it just went on. For those of you who know me relatively well you know that I am NOT a confrontational person, generally avoiding it at all cost; a huge fault of mine. But this one got me and I was actually proud of myself & my responses.
So PLEASE everyone, pick 1-3 things to work on to reduce this problem.
Bahamas –
March 19-22, 2022
WOW!!! When you preliminarily envision what the Bahamas look like before you get there, this place checks all the boxes. The world’s first land & sea park created in 1958 encompasses 176 square miles and is an ecological preserve and wildlife refuge. The major influencer to form the park was Ilya Tolstoy, a naturalist and grandson of the famed author Leo Tolstoy. A study was done by the Bahamian gov’t and the Bahamas National Trust Act was signed in 1959 officially establishing the park.
We visited Warderick Wells and Shroud Cay’s in the park and they offer hiking trails, snorkel areas, dinghy paths thru the mangroves and the ultimate in pristine beaches. I’m going to quit typing and let pictures be the thousand words.
Shroud Cay; dinghy ride thru the mangroves to Driftwood Beach.
The photo images don’t really do justice to the actual scenery, but they’re close. These are the images that we will remember for a lifetime.
Show me da money!
March 19, 2022
The Bahamas is currently economically ranked 6th amongst the 32 countries in the Americas region. They were hit hard financially by Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and by Covid in 2020/21 due to the loss of their main income driver, tourism. Their current unemployment rate of around 11% is dropping after 14% in 2020.
There is however an exorbitant amount of wealth in and plying the waters of the Bahamas. Many of the 700 islands making up the Bahamas are private islands; 72 of which are for sale right now for $2-$55 million. Celebs who have islands here include Johnny Depp, David Copperfield, Beyonce & JayZ, Shakira, Tim McGraw & Faith Hill and Eddie Murphy. Those and countless other elites have their mansions in paradise. Wow, have your own private island, cannot conceive that notion. Is it all relative?
Then there are the not yachts, not mega yachts, but the super yachts. The one in the cover picture above is owned by a Pakistani billionaire, it’s 282ft long worth $75million and was previously owned by a Russian Oligarch. Another we saw was 180ft worth $60m owned by the richest woman in Mexico. Another was owned by a DNA sequencing scientist complete w/a lab on board from which he developed one of the rapid Covid testing products. The one that took the cake was 290ft worth $150m. The yacht itself was one thing, what put it over the top was its ‘support’ vessel, a 227ft worth $40m, complete w/a helipad. I could go on but I’ll stop, again cannot conceive of this magnitude of wealth. Is it all relative?
The coup de grace was a VHF radio conversation heard between the captain of the boat in the cover pic and the ‘support’ vessel below: “boat name, boat name do you carry a nurse on board; we have someone with a gash on her wrist, nothing too serious but we’d like someone to look at it”. Response after about an 8 second pause said w/a condescending tone, “no sir, we carry a doctor on board”. All relative?
So then you get into the big idea development opportunities and the drug king pins running drugs complete w/crashed planes in the waters; all driving the economy till they don’t. The drug king pins supposedly paid off the ruling political party at the time and its leader resulting in an inquiry leading to resignations and dismissals of officials.
In the mid 1960’s Lou Chesler was introduced to undeveloped Great Harbor Cay in the Berry Islands by Harold Christie, ‘The Father of Bahamas Real Estate’. An investment of $38 million was made to create a hideaway for the privileged. A golf course and multistoried ‘clubhouse’ were built overlooking the sea. It included the current marina basin. Again it was built for the socially elite; Cary Grant, Brigitte Bardot, Dame Margot Fonteyn, the Rockefeller’s, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr and Ingrid Bergman initially graced it w/their presences. In 1975 Chesler was in serious debt and abandoned the project leaving it to deteriorate into ruins.
Is it all relative??? You be the judge…
Bahamas – Pigs???
March 18, 2022
Ok, so D & I both SWORE over the Explorer Charts and just about anything else important that we could, that we would NOT go see the ‘swimming pigs’ at Staniel Cay. Multiple times, multiple places, to multiple people, NO we would not go see them. A tourist trap. So what happens? After a Goombay Smash & Yellow Bird cocktail, we are hightailing it in Bo from the Staniel Cay Yacht Club back to Rory and we both look at each other. 5 minutes away, they’re just 5 minutes away. Swerve, even tho the depth of the water under Rory’s keel is only 1.3 ft, swerve – to da pigs. Sigh, we are so weak!
Bahamas – Staniel Cay
March 18, 2022
Staniel Cay is located just about in the middle of the Exuma chain of islands. It’s one of those, ‘kinda gotta go to places’ but very touristy. A lot of cruisers make a stop there for the Staniel Cay Yacht Club for fuel and water and snorkeling the Thunderball Grotto, which was featured in the 1965 James Bond movie of same name (take bread and feed the reef fish so they come to you), swim w/the nurse sharks (fed w/fish so they come to you), and the swimming pigs (take food w/and feed them so they come to you). We visited the Yacht Club, they make VERY strong drinks, saw the nurse sharks and the pigs (did not swim w/either) and due to the fact it was high tide did not go to the grotto. We took a dinghy ride around the area which had amazingly clear water and beautiful beaches. Lots of people and boats around so we decided to head to the Exuma Land & Sea Park the next day instead of hanging around. Both the ‘famous’ Blue & Pink grocery stores were closed 🙁
So now it’s a been there done that kinda place.
