escapade sailing

The sail from Ile a Vache to the Dominican Republic was rough and tough.  25kts on the nose and a short sharp sea.  A punishing 36 hrs for boat and crew, and a great relief to get the hook down in Bahia de Aguilas, a spectacular deserted bay just over the Haitian border.  Sleeping, swimming, windsurfing, running, eating and resting until equilibrium restored.

Then we rounded Cabo Falso very early one morning and anchored off Isla Beata.  There’s a remote fisherman’s camp on the island, plus a coastguard station.  The table is laid and just as we are about to eat our breakfast omelette, a fishing boat arrives and 4 guys jump aboard.  One is in the uniform of the Armada (Navy), the others are in jeans and t shirts, but this seems to be an official visit.  We explain in sailor’s Spanish that we have arrived from Haiti and are on our way to Salinas, the nearest official Port of Entry in DR.  They write down our passport details and ship’s registration with a pencil in a notebook, then ask to see below.  They have a quick tour, (checking for Haitians perhaps) open a few lockers, look under a mattress and then in the fridge.  Finally they notice a rum bottle and suggest that we all have a drink.

That ship tells you a lot about Haiti.

We sailed south through the Windward Passage.  The sun set behind the mountains of Cuba to starboard.

We furled the gennaker and sailed on a broad reach all night in about 20 knots of wind with full main and jib.  We were cruising at about 14 knots on the low swell, catching surfs up to 18 knots.

We covered a lot of ground that night.  By morning the scent of earth and woodsmoke reached us across the water and the sun rose over the green mountains of Haiti.

Our destination was Ile à Vache, an island off the south coast of Haiti.  As we rounded the tip of the island we could see in to the Baie de Feret where we planned to anchor.  A small figure in a dugout canoe seemed to be paddling towards us.  Then another, then two guys paddling a rowing boat backwards, then a kid paddling half of a vintage windsurf board with a palm frond as a paddle.  In all, our welcoming committee comprised about 25 boys and men, mostly in dugout canoes.  Each came alongside, introduced himself in French or English and welcomed us to Ile à Vache.

They accompanied us in to the bay, everyone shouting and laughing, they showed us where to anchor and supervised the whole process which Dawn and I usually manage quietly with a couple of hand signals, but today we were surrounded by a flotilla of earnest advisors.  Once the anchor was down, the haggling began for who had reached us first, second and third and could therefore claim priority in offering us all of their services.  This was quite a noisy process but it was agreed that the paddling competition to greet us had been won by a boy called Erns, “I was first peoples!”.  Now the serious discussions could begin about how much work there was to do on the boat, who would be hired to wash the hulls, polish the stainless etc.  All this was a bit overwhelming for us after two long days and a night at sea, with no more than four hours sleep each.

We soon came to understand a few basics here.  We have been welcomed in to the village of Caille Coq.  It’s a kind of paradise, children and animals everywhere, everyone living in very simple houses under the canopy of breadfruit, almond, cashew, mango and coconut trees behind the beach.  There is some garden farming and fishing, but not much employment.  Visiting yachts are seen as an opportunity for the villagers to work and earn some money.  We wanted to do our bit for the local economy.

We didn’t really have any work to offer, but we made some.  We quickly appointed boys to take our trash, provide us with regular deliveries of coconuts and beer, guide us to the nearby market, watch our dinghy while we were ashore etc.  Everyone wanted in on the act, so we hired guides to accompany us to the mainland to see immigration, others to watch the boat while we were away, someone offered to take us horse riding.  In addition there were all the kids selling us mangos and anything else they could offer and passing fishermen would sell us a fish or two.  We tried to buy something from everyone.  One of the boys’ great ideas was to convert their homes into a restaurant for the night and have their mums cook us a Haitian dinner.

We enjoyed evenings in the village and being welcomed into family homes for delicious meals.  Everything is cooked over a wood or charcoal fire, usually in a separate palm thatch cooking hut.  Fish, lobsters, rice and peas, sauces and salads, all served by the light of an oil lamp.  Haiti is dark at night.

When the middle of the day is hot, we usually have a quiet lunch in the shady cockpit and perhaps 40 winks until it’s cool enough to move around again.  Not here!  We are anchored just off the village and are clearly considered part of it.  The kids here grow up in a small group of families and live quite communally.  The idea that we would like any privacy would not occur to them, any time our dinghy is visible, we are on board and therefore open to visitors.  At any time of day we would have dugout canoes moored by bits of old string to our sterns and an ever changing group of guests.

Apart from the opportunity to work and earn a few dollars, the kids just want to be onboard, to practice their English and French, teach us some Creole, show me how to paddle one of their ‘bois fouille’ (canoe hollowed out of a mango tree trunk).  Forget about the quiet siesta, unless I specifically asked them all to leave, which I never had the heart to do, we resigned ourselves to being a floating extension to their social life.

If you grew up here, even the most modest cruising yacht would appear to be a visitor from a different world.  We have solar power, phone charging leads, an onboard desalination plant, cold drinks and satellite communications.  Remember that on this island there are no roads or cars, no electricity or running water (although everyone has a mobile phone and a Facebook account!)  The boys are all keen to learn and they all seem to understand that education is their key to a richer life than their parents or grandparents knew.  Most of those generations speak only Creole and have never left Haiti. These kids study English and French, some Spanish, they can communicate with outsiders and start to understand the world beyond here.

The working boats in the area of Ile à Vache are still powered by sails and paddles.  The ‘bois fouille’ canoes are everywhere, propelled with a rough hand-made oar or sometimes a trimmed palm frond.  It seems every boy has access to one by the age of about 12.  They look to be 1000 years old but may have been made last year.  One of the earliest forms of human transport!  These are in current production, dug-out by hand and available from the builder in Les Cailles for about $60 US, I was very tempted!

They are really beautiful, often with a pronounced curve or s-bend along their length, following the shape of the mango tree trunk. A bit wobbly to paddle but they also rig sprit sails and somehow balance all that and a fishing net.

The fishing boats or ‘bâtiments’  are all engineless with enormous mainsails on bamboo sprits, many of these are old yacht sails, presumably donated by visiting boats over the years.  The booms are bamboo and their length out of all proportion to the boat.  The hulls are all built on the beach from the indigenous timber with a simple frame and planking construction, often recycling sound timbers from previous versions.

They have no keels but are balanced by wedging a bamboo pole under a frame and sending a skilled man outboard as a counterbalance to keep her upright.  Crude but very effective.

These boats sail upwind and down in all weathers, used for fishing, laying out nets and home-made bamboo fish traps, and also as passenger vehicles for visiting the mainland or the market.  If the wind dies they fold up the rig and use the bamboo poles as oars. So many skippers asked me if I had any old sails or ropes in the locker, sadly not.  Dawn was keen to donate our kevlar code zero which would have made a couple of nice bâtiment sails, but I vetoed that idea.  We were able to provide some snorkelling gear, also in short supply and used daily here for conch and spear fishing.

If any other sailors are passing this way, don’t discard anything!  Any old sail, rope or rigging that these guys can get will be valued and used to fish and feed their families for decades.

Engines are still rare.  We took a skiff to the mainland powered by an ancient chugging outboard, but there are very few motorised craft here.  This will change and a couple of the boys from the village told me they would train as mechanics for diesel and outboard engines, they already have good English and they hope to make a living working here on visiting yachts.

We went over to the mainland to visit the town of Les Cailles where we could clear in with the authorities and visit the market for provisions. The remains of the French colonial architecture are crumbling in to the streets, freight is pushed around on hand carts.  The market was an experience from a different age, all transacted under a cloud of charcoal smoke.  Sorry no photos of this, many Haitians object to being photographed, I don’t fully understand why.  There is plenty that I don’t understand about Haiti, in many ways the most African place we have experienced in the Caribbean.  Cut off from the rest of the world, the Haitian culture has developed in isolation and produced it’s own art and music, voodoo is a mainstream part of the culture.

In the immigration office we were shown to a private room to have are passports stamped. Two floors below was a scrum of Haitians in the process of applying for a passport.  The cost of this is way beyond most of the population, and for the lucky few that acquire one, they then have to get a visa to go anywhere. Not easy travelling on a Haitian passport.

Is the biggest village on Ile a Vache.  We walked for two hours along the mud tracks and beaches to visit the market there.  Another experience that makes you wonder when the clock stopped here.  The market stalls are constructed from twigs, or may be just a few fruit piled on the ground.  Goods are transported on mules’ backs or womens’ heads. Fish and meat are butchered under the hot sun.  We visited the orphanage and hospital and donated most of the contents of our ship’s medical box.

We watched four more yachts arriving in the bay as we sailed away, the boys paddling furiously to greet them.  I’d love to come back one day and see how life works out for those guys.

We spent about a week living a slice of Haitian life and it was a very intense time for us.  Dealing with the non-stop attention and trying to manage all the requests, happy to help in any way we could.  A really special experience.  How will Haiti change by the time all these smart kids grow up.  One of our new friends suggested I may want a small house in the village for when we’re too old to sail anymore.  I told him I’d think about it.

23rd April 2016

Apparently the ‘Turks Islands’ are so named because of this cactus, which appears to be wearing a fez, like a ‘Turk’s head’.

Today we crossed the Caicos Bank from Ambergris Cay to French Cay, about 40 miles across a huge enclosed swimming pool.  It is surrounded by islands and reefs, the enclosed area is no more than 3 or 4 metres deep.  You can safely anchor for the night out here, out of sight of land!  40 miles across a flat turquoise sea with the shadow of the boat just below us on the white sand bottom.  We were joined by dolphins from time to time, they would swim with us for a few laps of the boat before fading away.

We left French Cay at first light and said farewell to the Turks and Caicos.  We hoisted the big red gennaker and Escapade slipped away in the light breeze, over the end of the turquoise bank and in to the deep blue water beyond.  We had finally finished off the wahoo fillets so it was time to go fishing again.  I was quite pleased with the new cedar plug so we dragged that behind the boat all morning with not so much as a nibble.  Maybe that wahoo was a fluke catch.  Then at high noon we had a big strike.  I carefully adjusted the drag setting on the reel as the rod bent double and the fish ran hard.  Dawn singlehandedly eased and furled the 90sqm gennaker to slow the boat while I watched the last few metres of line running off my reel, nothing I could do, if I increased the resistance the line would snap, if I did nothing it would snap anyway in about 5 seconds, the fish was just too big for this gear.  I have been considering an upgraded reel with more line capacity and drag control, for just this situation!  So I thought all was lost: the fish, the hook, the cedar plug and 500 metres of line, but then the fish just stopped, with only a few turns of line left on the reel, I pulled the rod up and was able to wind some line back on.  The fish was tired!  So was I by the time I had regained all 500 metres, 20 minutes later.  As the fish neared the boat the bill broke the surface, a marlin?  A narwhal?  We finally hauled the extraordinary creature in to the fish locker.  A long spike from the snout, a giant flapping dorsal fin and a huge powerful tail.  This one definitely didn’t fit in the locker. A 1.7 metre long sailfish.

So the fridges are loaded with fresh fillets again and the trusty cedar plug is back in the tackle locker.  It has only been in the water twice and has delivered 2 big game fish and all the protein we need for 2 weeks!

We are back in the Bahamas.  Anchored off a deserted 5 mile beach on the western shore of Little Inagua.  The island is about the size of Guernsey, inhabited only by birds and lizards.  This place is rarely visited by boats and we are completely alone here.  The water is beautifully clear and the beach is littered with shells and coral.  There is an untouched feel to the place, fish swim up to you, curious, not used to having humans around.  The night sky is dark and we can watch glowing jellyfish and squid swimming round the boat.  Behind us is a 500m strip of shallow water over white sand, studded with colourful coral heads, then the depth plunges to the deep, deep blue of 1000 metres. We float out over the drop-off with snorkels,  that dark blue gets a bit spooky. An awe inspiring place to free dive, free fall in to the abyss!

On one dive to a deep section of reef close to the edge, at around 15 metres down I encountered the biggest Nassau grouper I have ever seen. I don’t think much spear fishing goes on around here, the fish are fearless and relaxed.  I got to within a few feet of the grouper, which was about the size of a golden retriever, he seemed quite pleased to see me. Well within range, happily for him I was unarmed. I have been banned from killing anything else until we’ve eaten all the sailfish.

We had planned to sail off again this morning but just couldn’t tear ourselves away.  Little Inagua is the Garden of Eden. We’re staying.  Sailfish curry anyone?

So Escapade is tied up safe in Turtle Cove Marina, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands.

Now for the first time in months we have to deal with the traumas of:

Long trousers

Socks and shoes

Airport security lines

Large scale human transportation in Easter holiday season.

But it’s worth it!

Our first trip to Canada.

Crisp mountain air, our good friends from Guernsey and our first snowboard turns for two years.  Whistler and Blackcomb mountains are a vast playground.

There is even an April snowstorm!  So refreshing to be riding through a blizzard.  Even better the next day waking up to blue skies and a foot of powder at the top.  Hiking up from the top lift to drop in to the Blackcomb Glacier Bowl with Tony and Gill.

Then the ultimate treat of touring the untracked peaks of British Columbia on a heli-skiing trip.

I don’t really agree with heli-skiing.  Maybe I’m an old boat-dwelling hippy, powered by wind and solar, but it just doesn’t seem right these days, does it?

Helicopters are obscenely loud, violently chopping the air and spraying aviation exhaust all over an otherwise silent and pristine wilderness.

I imagine the local bears and elk view them much as I would a jet-ski in a quiet anchorage.  A rude intrusion to the natural peace of their winter in the mountains.  The French thought so and banned it completely in their Alps.

It is a very expensive and elitist way for those who can afford it to experience real back country skiing, without exertion.  How many heli guests would have the fitness to climb a slope with skins?

So I have mixed feelings, and it will all probably be banned soon, as a disastrously hedonistic waste of jet fuel.  But for now, for the lucky few, a helicopter is still the ultimate ski lift.

It takes you in to high mountain terrain and spits you out at the top of your powder daydream.  My first hell snowboard trip was in Alaska and I had more untracked riding in a week there than the whole of the previous 10 years.

Even for those with a healthy adrenaline-appetite, it starts to feel a bit gluttonous.

But here we are in Whistler, I mention some of these concerns to locals while chatting on chairlifts.  They assure me that BC is so vast that there are plenty of quiet spots for bears to sleep peacefully outside of the relatively tiny area licensed to the heli-operators.  The smooth talking concierge at our hotel studies the weather forecasts.  Snow is falling.  He predicts conditions on Thursday will be heli-skiing perfection..

Tony and I arrive at the heli base and meet the group we will be flying with.  The sky is blue and spirits are high.

We spend the morning learning how to ride out an avalanche, find each other when buried under a slide, how to use the transceivers, probes and shovels in our backpacks.

Reassuring words from our guide: “I have NEVER had to dig out a skier on one of these trips.  And this is my second week on the job..”  Funny man.  Next we learn how to get in and out of the helicopter, not get our heads chopped off, how to escape from an overturned aircraft in the snow in the unlikely event that we survive a crash.  Our group has gone a bit quiet.  Finally we are loaded in to the helicopter and off we go.  It’s spring weather down in the valley, rivers gushing through the trees, but as you climb up into the world of high mountain peaks, it’s winter again.

A beautiful day.  Thousands of metres of descent through virgin snow.  It was so good.  I was laughing out loud whilst floating from turn to turn.  If you like that sort of thing, go heli-skiing quick, before they ban it.

Meanwhile back on the groomed slopes of Whistler, I can’t  help notice how ridiculously radical skiing and snowboarding have become lately.  The ‘snow park’ used to be a little place on the side of the piste where the teenagers hung out, right?  A sort of novelty obstacle course, I never really took much notice.  Now it seems to be the whole mountain!  And those ramps have got huge!  The aerial antics of the pros in Red Bull helmets are terrifying, but it’s not just them, everyone under the age of 30 seems to spend more time rotating above the mountain than riding down it. The teenagers in our group from Guernsey were getting coached to a high technical level and progressing so fast. Nobody seems interested in carving turns anymore, it’s all about park skills, rails, boxes, kickers and big, big air.  Impressive.

Can’t believe how good the snow still is in the middle of April, but down in the village folks are sunbathing by the pool.  Trees are in leaf, the lifts are closing. There is a music festival, the young seasonaires of Whistler are enjoying end of season parties, all night DJ sets, fancy dress ski days and the hilarious ‘Silent Disco’ (gate-crashed by Team Guernsey).  So happy that we grabbed the opportunity to get some mountain time, in the last gasp of Canadian winter.  Thanks again to Team Tostevin for dragging all our gear there and back.  It was great to be with you all up there.

After 9 days in snowboard boots its great to feel our bare feet  on the warm decks of the boat.  Mine are straight back into the footstraps of my windsurf board. There’s a good swell on the reef and I have the warm waves to myself again. It’s good to be back!

When you casually glance at a chart, the TCI archipelago appears to be hundreds of square miles of interesting islands to explore.

We’ve heard there is great diving and windsurfing, I reckoned we would need at least a month to see it all.

Then when you then sit down and study the charts and pilot books you realise that it’s not really a place for sailing boats to cruise and there are only a handful of possible anchorages.  The whole place is so shallow that even we can’t get in to most of it.  We hadn’t really done the homework until we arrived.

Providenciales (Provo) is the most developed and commercial island.  The north coast is a continuous strip of white sand, beautiful water inside a barrier reef, backed by resorts and hotels.

But what it lacks in interesting anchorages it makes up for with great facilities.  We had a few small boat jobs to do; we needed a metal fabrication, some woodwork and a few spares.  Provo has great DIY shops, workshops, engineers and machine shops, a real hive of industry down the dusty tracks inland.  And all quite enjoyable thanks to the friendly and helpful folks of Provo.

We ticked some jobs off the list, also went scuba diving at West Caicos, found some waves on the Provo reef passes and sampled some of the many restaurants.

Wendy and Tony joined us for a few days. This was the first time Wendy (Dawn’s Mum) had sailed with us since she crewed a passage from La Coruna on our first Atlantic trip 12 years ago. We were keen to show them a slice of Escapade life.

We went sailing and found some quiet cays to the North of Provo where we anchored and explored a bit, Tony piloted the boat through the reefs, we ate conch, went snorkelling and marvelled at Wendy’s 2-up freestyle windsurfing debut.

Great to hear all the news and realise how out of touch we are with UK current affairs. The intrepid travellers left us to continue their trip travelling Cuba from end to end by road. We look forward to hearing all about it.

All those cold winters were at least close enough to the Alps for a couple of trips each season.

When I first mentioned this Dawn laughed, “you can’t have it all”.

But there was an invitation to join friends on a ski trip, with an offer to bring all our snowboard gear from Guernsey!

In Turks and Caicos we found a safe harbour to park a boat for 10 days and direct flights to Canada.

We’re off to Whistler.

 

Windsurf research

I have windsurfed in waves every day this week.  Two different reefs on Long Island, riding on both tacks, small waves, bigger waves, all fully powered with 4.7 or 5.3.  Both spots are remote and only really accessible by boat.  The waves are mainly windswell wrapped around points and reefs, faces cleaned up by the shallow coral and groomed by the side-shore breeze.  Nothing too heavy but great fun to ride and there are some shallow ledges where the waves wall up and throw a bit.  The potential for wave sailing in these islands is inspiring.

Our first Jumento.  South of the ‘No Name Cays’ we are greeted by a family of dolphins, tiny babies finning hard to keep up with their mothers as they glide around the boat.  The babies stay in exactly the same position relative to their mother, slipstreaming on her right side and matching every twist and turn of her body.  Born swimming.  We surf through the hair-raising shallow green entrance with waves breaking around us to arrive in the calm lee of Water Cay.  We are now on the edge of the Great Bahama Bank, a vast sea of bright blue shallow water stretching north to Bimini and west almost to Cuba.  Most of it about 5 metres deep.  (‘Bahama’ from old Spanish: ‘Baja Mare’, shallow sea).  You see white clouds turn turquoise here, reflecting the sea colour.

There is one other boat here.  Cheval is a classic Outremer 50 built in 1995, a direct ancestor of Escapade.  David and Natalie have been on board alone here for days while all that wind blew through, they are happy to see other people, and another Outremer.   We hike to the top of the island to enjoy the view of the waves crashing to windward and the two catamarans anchored off the leeward beach.  Outremers are quite rare and here we are the only two yachts for miles in any direction.

What are the chances? We were lucky to meet them, David and Natalie have sailed the Bahamas for years and they come to Water Cay every year.  They have also sailed across the Pacific and still think the water here is the most transparent they have ever seen.

So they are experts in these waters, they know every reef and bank off Water Cay and also happen to be life-long spear fishermen.

Having acquired a bit of basic freediving training in Bonaire, I have been keen to apply the purist skills of descending to depth ‘because it’s there’ to the more practical art of swimming down to the reef, sneaking up on a beautiful wild creature, shooting it through the head and surfacing with a free supper.  We have speared a few easy fish and lobster in shallow water but almost everywhere we have been, spearguns are illegal.  I brought one from Guernsey where it has yet to kill a bass.

Now I have a new toy, the ‘Hawaiian Sling’ which is basically an underwater bow and arrow, but it is legal to fish with one in the Bahamas.  My new neighbour David is an expert.  He offers to take me out to the reefs.  For a couple of days I am treated to a spear hunting masterclass.

How to cock and shoot slings and pole-spears, where to find delicious hogfish, triggerfish, groupers and lobsters, how to dive, approach them and get the best shot.  What not to eat as a precaution against ciguatera poisoning.  David spots a lobster in a coral cave about 6m down, shows me where it is and tells me to go and shoot it.  I cock the sling, dive down and swim outside the cave trying to take aim, I shoot and miss.  The lobster retreats further. David’s turn, He descends through the transparent water and with one gloved hand holds on to a rock at the mouth of the cave, hanging upside down whilst carefully aiming and firing his pole-spear with the other.  He didn’t miss.  The key advantage being that he could hold himself still whereas I needed both hands to fire my sling, ok, better get a pole spear too!   It’s another very simple spike catapulted by a stretchy rubber tube.  One of the important things is to be close to the dinghy,  David and I did some long drifts on the tide, diving down to every likely coral head while the dinghies stand by.  Today the wind has dropped to nothing.  At slack water Dawn snorkels with me, spotting for targets whilst towing the dinghy with the painter attached to her weight belt!  At the end of this morning’s productive session the vibrations and blood in the water had attracted some very large barracuda and a shark, time to get back in the dinghy.

We have learned a lot, eaten a lot and there is plenty in the fridge.

The classic free diving techniques get distorted by all the fishing factors.  It is hard to maintain a relaxed, slow heart rate at depth when you are hunting.  There is too much going on.  Swimming against a current, spotting your prey, getting close enough to take a shot, perhaps diving repeatedly to the same depth to get the right moment and then hauling the speared beast out of the coral cave in which it has tried to retreat.  Having shot my first hogfish only to have it swim off the spear as I was ready to surface, I dived back to the bottom and without time to cock the sling just hand-harpooned the wounded fish, this time past the folding barb, secure on the spear, and dead.  Ok now time to go up.

All that diving is tiring.  What’s needed are afternoon naps, protein-rich meals, a sound night’s sleep in a glassy calm bay, ready to do it all again tomorrow.  Tonight’s supper is lobster (again) with ginger, garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce.

What is ‘it all’?  Not sure, but I think we’re away from it.  No buildings, cars, people, not even a plane in the sky.  No wind again today and I’m listening to birdsong as the sun rises over Water Cay.  Last night we watched sharks swimming under the boat, I saw shooting stars in huge dark sky, the only light pollution was the glow of the white sand beach.  I always find these places really special but it’s hard to put your finger on it, what’s the attraction of the wilderness?  OK, It is beautiful, peaceful, nobody here except birds, lizards and fish.  After a couple of days there seems to be a purity to the experience, ‘pura vida’, I don’t want to leave.  Just to be alive in the elements, sun rises, birds sing, we breathe, swim, fish, eat, sleep.  Sharks swim beneath our bed.

I was talking to a passing Bahamian fisherman, Pietro. His first greeting was ‘Hey man she’s a beauuuuty’. Not sure if he meant the boat or the deck hand.  Anyway he was out here on a hard 12 day fishing trip to the Jumentos from his home on Long Island.  With a big grin he told me he prefers it out here because he’s ‘closer to God’.

Back in Clarence Town an American guy was telling me about sharks.  He had just been watching them while fishermen were cleaning their catch on the dock.  “Man there were nurse sharks, tiger sharks, bull sharks, makos, hammerheads’.  ‘How big?’.   ‘Big!’

As he spoke a huge shark came gliding right under our feet and out the other side of the dock.

Now I’ve been in lots of sharky places over the years.  Australia, South Africa, Hawaii, California and I’ve spent plenty of time in the water, surfing and windsurfing. You know the sharks are there, they live there, but in all those places I’ve never actually seen one in the water, so they remain sort of theoretical.

Here in the Bahamas the sharks are big, common and highly visible.  The water is just so clear you can see every detail, not theoretical at all.

Anchored at Water Cay I was gutting some recently impaled fish when two nurse sharks appeared and started to swim around the boat.  They are well known to be docile and quite harmless to humans, always attracted to an easy snack if you are filleting fish on the back of your boat.  It’s still a real novelty for us to see sharks so clearly.  I’m fascinated by the way they swim, so powerful and efficient, I decide to jump in and free dive with a camera to get some footage.

One tolerates me swimming alongside for a while, then drifts lazily out of shot.  I turn to see a new shadow approaching, a beautiful shark emerges from the blue yonder, I dive and swim alongside, concentrating on framing the shot.  I notice this one is different.  Bigger, white underbelly, pointed snout.  That’s not a nurse shark.

I sense that I am too close and the shark doesn’t like it.  I surface and look up to see that I am now a good distance from Escapade.  Then I check on the shark who has swum in a small circle and straight underneath me.  It circles again and swims directly at me, but this time it has angled up from the sand and is coming straight for me at the surface.  At this point I miss the ‘Gopro Moment’ of the day and flick my fins between his head and me.  He turns inches from me and swims away.  I make my way across a boat length or so of recently chummed water, a leisurely swim as you can imagine, and scramble aboard where Dawn informs me that was not a nurse shark.

We think it was a bull shark, they are known to be a bit more boisterous than a nurse shark, and swimming with them is not recommended.  How big?  Bigger than me.

Still no wind, we motored south to Flamingo Cay for a night and then this morning arrived in Jamaica Cay.  A beautiful natural harbour surrounded by islets and reefs.  No other boats in sight.  We have now decided that the Nassau Grouper is our favourite fish to eat here, so I went and shot one for supper.

We sailed away from lovely Jamaica Cay this morning, we left only footprints and took only photographs.. and two coconuts.. and some grouper fillets.

Finally the breeze is back, first sailing wind this week.  We hoist the code zero and full main and enjoy a 20 mile beat down to Buenavista Cay, the final approach over the shallow banks is really something, in 10kts of wind we are sailing at 9kts over flat turquoise water, 2.5 metres deep for miles.   We anchor off a mile of white beach, again, no other boats in sight.  Silence.  Except, was that a rooster crowing?  We go ashore on a paddle board and see fresh footprints on the beach.  We follow them up a rocky path and down into Edward Lockhart’s kingdom.

This guy really deserves a blog post of his own.  He is the sole inhabitant of this beautiful island where he has cleared a big area of bush and created a farm.  Here he has planted coconut and papaya trees, avocados, sweet potatoes, peas, melons, medicinal herb bushes.  He is also raising chickens, ducks, peacocks, 3 sheep and about 300 wild goats which he occasionally traps and eats or sends to market.  Supplies arrive when the passing island mailboat can land at his beach.  His simple timber house on the beach has weathered hurricanes Sandy and Joachin.  This week while we were hanging out at the farm he had raked hundreds of kilos of pure white sea salt from the salt pond half a mile away, chopped down a huge sea grape tree to clear more land and was excavating the root ball using a massive home-made tripod.  He carries water daily from a well for the animals.  He took me spearfishing around every coral head in the bay, diving and shooting fish.  Edward is 76 years old, but you’d never guess.  He was happy to have company and his stories are worth hearing.  He grew up as a boy on this island before travelling the Bahamas maintaining the lighthouses with his father, who was also a rumrunner during the US Prohibition.  He is a boatbuilder, joiner, sometime smuggler, has been in jails in Cuba (twice) and Nassau.  He once swam from Nassau to BVC diving for fish all the way.  Now he is enjoying his Cay and planning improvements: solar power, desalination and homes for his son and grandchildren.  Edward showed us his expert techniques for skinning and filleting a triggerfish, opening and skinning conch, which he cooked for us and served on his homemade furniture on the beach.  He cut a branch from his Lignum Vitae tree, stripped the bark with a whittling knife and presented it to me as a gift.  ‘For tenderising conch.  And if you have to hit a man with it he ain’t gettin’ up’.  It is heavy, fragrant yellow wood.  He tells me Lignum Vitae from this island was shipped to Scotland Yard in London to make truncheons!  They also grew grapefruit here that were so sweet they were presented to the young Queen Elizabeth, from a far backwater of her empire.  Our time anchored off Edward’s paradise was a taste of a real Out Island life.  Stories of his brothers, cousins, preachers, rum-runners, smugglers, Jamaican cocaine, Haitian rum, ‘teefin’ no-goods’ and all the characters of a life lived on these specks of land.

What a treat, our first inhabited Jumento!

Buenavista Cay, population: 1.

After a quiet night at the rather formally named (but uninhabited) Double Breasted Cay, we have now arrived at the end of the Jumentos chain.  The settlement on Ragged Island is Duncan Town (population 40) where we are told there is a restaurant and internet! Will try to post this before we go. The weather is changing again.  The light easterlies have moved SE and freshened.  There’s another cold front coming.  A storm is swirling off the Carolinas to our north and the weather down here will be disturbed for a few days.  We plan to take advantage of the changes in direction to island-hop our way east to the Turks and Caicos.  This may be the last ‘Winter Norther’ of the season so it’s time to sail east while we can.

We are bracing ourselves for another culture shock.  After our Jumentos odyssey we will arrive in Provo where there will be cars, planes, shopping malls, air conditioning, internet and, with a bit of luck, pizza.

So we sailed away from the Dominican Republic, past the Caicos Bank to arrive on the southern shore of Mayaguana, the easternmost outpost of the Bahamas.  The trip was about 200 miles and Escapade just ate them up.  The winds were light, so we hoisted the full mainsail and unfurled the big red gennaker, the most canvas we can carry, total 180 sqm of sail.  That rig pulls Escapade along nicely and we were averaging 10 kts until nightfall when we reduced sail and slowed the boat for the hours of darkness.  This has become our habit now and we sometimes question it, particularly when the night is as benign as this.  The Caicos were protecting us from the Atlantic swell so we were sailing over almost flat water with 15kts of breeze on the beam and a huge full moon to show the way.  We could easily have left the big gennaker up, but we are short-handed and you never know when one of those 30kt squalls might pass by.  So we trundled on through the night at about 8kts with main and jib, and both slept well off-watch.

The Bahamas consists of 700 inhabited islands and thousands of uninhabited islets and cays.  There is more coral in the Bahamas than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.  I have always wanted to sail through these islands.  I’ve heard about the tricky weather and very shallow water, but we have the right boat for that now.  We have arrived at the easternmost tip of the chain which stretches 450 miles west and north towards Florida. Up that way is Nassau, cruise ships and casinos.  Down here we are in the ‘Out Islands’, and this place is the end of the line, the ‘first and last’ port of entry to clear in or out of the island nation.

The front passed and we had a great forecast for the 60 mile hop to the next stop: Acklins Island.  Dawn had researched an anchorage called Lovely Bay which didn’t even get a mention in our Bahamas guide book.  The entrance is through a reef pass and the bay is very shallow, not much water for a monohull but we only need a metre with the daggerboards up.  Soon we are swinging in a gigantic shallow turquoise swimming pool, tucked in behind reef fringed islets.  The bay is vast, miles across and no other boats in sight.

Ashore we meet Dick who has spent the last 16 winters there and tells us we are the first visitors to the bay this season!  Acklins was hit by Hurricane Joachin in October.  The storm was tracking way North off Carolina, then it turned south and headed straight for these Islands, where it stayed and blew for three days.  A freak storm. The damage was devastating. the water in the huge ‘Bight of Acklins’ had been blown over the island which was then deep underwater.  Roads destroyed, buildings blown away, fishing boats ‘just gone’.  Remarkably nobody was killed.  Lovely Bay is now just slightly less lovely having been stripped of many of the hundreds of coconut palms along the shore.  One morning I was running along a dirt track hurdling the wrecked power lines and uprooted palms, this whole area had been a metre under water at the height of the storm.  But all around are scrub bushes, mangroves, fragrant wild herbs, sea grape trees, yuccas and young palms all thriving.  And the lizard population seems to have shrugged off the storm.  Destruction and renewal.  Dick directed us to an abandoned watermelon patch and told us how to spot a ripe one.  Down the track, there they were, planted before the hurricane, lying on sunbaked sandy ground where you would expect nothing to grow, somehow inflating themselves with fresh water and sugar.  We scrumped as many as we could carry.  The sun shone down on Lovely Bay, we windsurfed, snorkelled the reefs, caught more lobster and watched the stingrays gliding under the boat.  But then the weather threatened a change and it was time to make a new plan.

We hardly ever use our engines except on arrival and departure from an anchorage. Escapade can reach at 6kts in 6kts of wind, so the motors don’t get much use.  Actually we have only topped up the diesel tanks twice since we left France in 2014.  There is always breeze in the Caribbean, but not always up here!  In about 3kts we motorsailed along the reef to the lighthouse at the NW tip of Crooked Island.  We took a paddle board ashore to the storm-ravaged settlement at Landrail Point.  This place got hit the hardest, we saw homes filled with sand, roofs blown off and debris scattered everywhere.  The community are rebuilding.  Everyone in town is now a builder.  We had a great supper of fried grouper at the only restaurant for miles around, if you’re passing through be sure to reserve a table with Willhamena at Gibsons Lunch Room.  These ‘Out Islands’ feel so remote.  It was interesting that the Americans we met that night were from the wilds of Alaska and Minnesota.  They have winter homes here and they are used to living in tiny isolated communities.

You know how wherever you go, people say “oh you should have seen this place 30 years ago, there was nothing here”.  Everywhere has become more developed, busier, more people, more buildings and cars.  Not here.  The populations of the Out Islands have been falling for years.  In the 1940s Lovely Bay was home to thousands, fishing, growing crops and exporting food around the islands.  Now there may be 100 people left, more abandoned their homes after the storm.  Our pilot book listed the population of Mayaguana at 500 but that was published 5 years ago, now less than half, the same on Crooked Island.  I don’t think we’ve ever been to a place where the normal forces of ‘progress’ seem to be in reverse.  At the current rate these places will all be abandoned in a few years.  But the islands are wonderful and the water surrounding them is just stunning, crystal clear shallow seas.  We have sailed past more anchorages probably all as lovely as Lovely Bay, you could spend a winter exploring here and hardly see another boat.

 

This title is borrowed from Hemingway’s novel set in the Gulf Stream waters of Cuba and the Bahamas, based on his experiences hunting U Boats here in WWII. I read it recently, great descriptions of life on the lagoons and an epic account of a boy’s long and brutal fight with a big fish that finally evades him. Somehow the lost fish becomes more significant than if it had been landed. Very reminiscent of Mike’s giant tuna off Morocco; a long hard struggle brought the fish almost within reach of Escapade’s gaff. Those who were on board that morning won’t forget Mike’s ‘one that got away’.

These waters are so fishy we are trolling small lures and hoping we don’t attract anything too big. And if we are lucky to hook a sensible sized fish, it’s a rush to get it on board before something bigger takes an interest!

Our supplies were running low. Protein is easy, we have been catching fish and diving for conch and lobster, but it’s nearly two weeks since our last supermarket in Puerto Plata DR and our fruit bowl is down to half a watermelon and a few limes.

In search of a tomato, we set a course for Clarence Town Long Island, 35 miles away.  We dropped the hook in yet another blue lagoon.  (Blah blah, turquoise, blah, white sand, blah, coconuts, blah blah).

Ashore we find another sleepy settlement.  I asked in a gas station where the nearest grocery store was. “Storm blew it away”.  We saw it, the empty fridges, freezers and food counters were still standing on the concrete floor but the walls and roof were ‘just gone’. The only other person around was Marcus who was paying for his fuel and kindly offered to drive us all over the island to get our provisions and back to the dock.  A twenty mile round trip and impromptu tour of Long Island for which he would accept no payment.  What a guy!  Typical of the warm and generous hospitality shown to us strangers in the Out Islands.

 

So we scored green tomatoes which are now ripening in the sun.

We have only seen four of the Bahamas so far but they are already rating pretty high on the ‘Escapade Island Ranking’ scale.  Next update soon..

Dominican Republic

In free diving this is nothing, part of a standard training warm-up session for deeper dives. For us today it felt like a huge accomplishment, something I just did not believe I would be able to do before we arrived in Bonaire.  Hey Riley, you were right! 

My deepest dive today was 14m.

The course is well structured, we passed the theory exams and we have now established:

I can equalise pressure as I descend.

I can swim 40 metres horizontally under water, on one breath.

So why not just swim 20m vertically down and 20m vertically back up?

This time we attach the buoy to Carlos’s deep mooring and drop the rope in about 40m of deep blue water, you can’t see the bottom which is a bit spooky.  He tells me there are some huge tuna down there.  After some warm-ups and pull-downs Carlos notices some stress in my movement. He asks me to hang for 10 seconds at 10 metres. Easy. That seemed to put me in the zone and I go for my first ‘constant weight’ dive.