Launching from the beach that morning was difficult, due to the heavy surf, and after I succeeded in getting out, I paddled back around to the protected side of the cay to avoid the high winds that were screaming across the Northwest Providence Channel. I stopped to take a saltwater bath and make myself halfway presentable before visiting the town of Spanish Wells, where I planned to get supplies. Feeling somewhat better, I paddled into the harbor, past rows of moored fishing boats and tied up to an old wooden dock. On the waterfront street, several curious residents that saw my strange craft coming in were now watching intently as I stepped out of the boat. A rotten board in the dock planking broke with my weight and caused me to take an embarrassing fall in front of my audience, but I somehow managed to avoid landing in the water and loosing my wallet, which I was holding in my hand.
Disembarking from the schooner, Whisper, at Royal Island, Bahamas
I had read a bit about Spanish Wells in a cruising guidebook Ben had on board Whisper. The name came from the fresh water wells on the cay where Spanish ships stopped to top off their water casks. The people living there now are descendants of a group of British colonists called the “Eleutheran Adventurers”, who left England 300 years ago to settle the island of Eleuthera. Unlike most Bahamian settlements of today, the town is predominantly white and the people cling to a perfect British accent. The quaint wooden houses are well kept and the neatness of the community rivals any small village in the English countryside. Only the tropical fruit trees shading the lawns reminded me that I was still in the Bahamas. Quiet streets with mostly pedestrian traffic and a handful of vintage cars made the town seem a few decades back in time. I had only walked half a block when a man driving by stopped and offered to take me wherever I needed to go. I gladly accepted, eager to talk with a local and learn more about the place, though cars seemed unnecessary to me on an island that is only about three miles long and a mile wide. I got in and we sped down the left side of the road. I learned that most of the men of Spanish Wells are commercial fishermen, including my host. He knew a lot about the sea, and seemed skeptical that I could survive all the crossings between Eleuthera and the Turks and Caicos in my kayak. He had fished those waters all his life and warned that the passages south of the Exumas were especially dangerous. But, he had never seen a kayak like mine, and like most people I’d met, was completely unfamiliar with its capabilities. I thanked him for the ride and got out at the far end of town, where there was a dive shop that he said might carry Hawaiian slings.
The shop was sold out of spearfishing gear, so I walked back to the town center where there was a post office and two general stores with a limited selection of groceries. I settled for a few canned goods, rice, spaghetti, and chocolate bars, and bought two fresh baked loaves of bread from a woman who sold them from her house. The hot bread was delicious. Bahamian bread makers mix their batter with the water from green coconuts, and the result is incomparable. I devoured half a loaf while I sat on a street corner and watched the blonde-haired school children that looked so out of place here file past on their way home from classes. When I returned to the dock with my groceries, I found that my kayak had created quite a sensation, and I had to answer lots of questions before I could be on my way. I hated to leave such a friendly town, but I was anxious to reach a deserted beach where I could cook a big dinner and spend some more time with my charts, working out my route to the south.
Eleuthera is an odd-shaped island, a hundred miles long, but quite narrow, with a long peninsula that juts out to the southeast towards the Exumas. From Spanish Wells, I paddled to a narrow beach on the west side of this peninsula and set up camp under a grove of Australian pines. Impenetrable thickets of palmettos, cactus, and bushes I could not identify cut my beach off from the rest of the island and blocked any further exploration on foot. I broke camp the following morning and paddled south to Current Cut, a narrow passage between the peninsula and Current Island, a long key that extends on to the southeast. The cut gets its name from the ripping 6-knot current that flows through when the tide is running in or out. I wanted to get to the other side to top off my water jugs in a little town called The Current before setting out for the Exumas. I was unlucky enough to reach the cut when the tide was running out, and was dismayed to see what looked like a whitewater river in the middle. I stayed close to the rocks on the north shore and paddled furiously against the flow, making it halfway through the quarter-mile wide cut before being flushed back out to where I had started. I landed on the beach to eat some lunch and plan a new strategy for the assault. I decided to try it from the south side, along the end of Current Island, and this time, after an exhausting half-hour battle, which I stubbornly refused to loose, I conquered Current Cut and emerged into the choppy waters on the other side. I pulled up to the wooden dock in The Current, where two black Bahamian fishermen were cleaning the day’s catch of conch. They were incredulous when I told them I made it through Current Cut against the tide, and asked why I didn’t simply wait for it to turn. Of course, I could have done that, but it was Saturday afternoon, and I figured the stores would soon close and wouldn’t open again before Monday. I wanted some more homemade bread before I headed south to other islands where I might not find any.
“Mon, you got to be crazy! Dat current, she make 6 knot, an’ all de time de big shark, dem hang out ‘round de Cut,” said one of the fishermen, who introduced himself as Henry. He told me I could leave my boat tied up to the dock and pointed in the direction of a house where I could buy fresh bread.
I bought two loaves and refilled my water jugs, and Henry told me that he had a Hawaiian sling and spear that he would sell me for $28. I knew the price was as high as a new one would have been in a dive shop, but I figured it would soon pay for itself in all the money I would save by eating fish and lobster instead of buying the high-priced food sold in the local village stores. Henry said that he lived in Current Island Settlement, three miles to the south, and told me to camp on the beach there and wait for him to return home that night and he would bring me the spear.
I hurried to get back through Current Cut before the tide changed directions. It was a joyride blasting through the quarter-mile run at six knots without having to dip the paddle. I could see schools of big fish in the clear waters beneath me, but though I looked expectantly, I saw none of “dem big shark.”
Henry had assured me that I would never have to worry about theft out in the “family islands” away from Nassau and other large towns of the Bahamas. I could see that the people of Current Island Settlement believed that by the way they left their outboard-powered Boston Whalers pulled up on the beach with all sorts of fishing equipment strewn about inside. The homes of the one hundred residents of the settlement were on the hill above, out of sight of the beach. I set up my tent near the remains of a bonfire on the pleasantly shaded beach and cooked supper while I waited for Henry. Just as he promised, he arrived before dark with the sling and spear. The 6-foot long stainless steel spear shaft was not perfectly straight, but Henry assured me this would not affect its accuracy at the close ranges at which spearfishing is done. The sling was a beautifully carved piece of hardwood with a hole drilled for the shaft to pass through and two bands of surgical rubber tubing connected to a metal socket designed to fit the butt of the spear. It was a simple and effective design, as I had discovered while hunting underwater with Ben. I paid Henry the $28 and we talked for a while around my campfire until swarms of no-see-ums drove him up the hill to his house and me into my tent.
I tried to tune in a radio station on my Sony Walkman, but was disappointed to find that I could receive only one AM station in Nassau. The broadcast consisted of nothing but gossip about who died and who was getting married, with the occasional gospel song thrown in for variety. I hadn’t realized how totally cut off I would be from the rest of the world while I was among the remote outer islands of the Bahamas. I was a little concerned about not being able to get weather reports, because I had no way of knowing
if a storm was approaching when I set out to make a long crossing. Paddling down the coast of Florida, and through the Keys, I could always tune in one of the ten NOAA Weather Radio frequencies available on my hand-held VHF radio. Here in the far eastern Bahamas, I was too far from Florida to receive those weather stations or any FM broadcasts from the U.S.
As I was packing up the following morning, an old man and a little girl came down the hill from Current Island Settlement to see my kayak and ask some questions. The subject of weather came up and the man told me he had made his living all his life from fishing these waters. He gave me some pointers on forecasting weather from natural signs, and answered my questions about my intended route to the Exumas. I was facing a 33-mile open water crossing from Current Island to the northernmost cay in the Exumas, and I hoped I could camp on Finley Cay, shown as a tiny speck on my chart in the middle of this passage.
“I know dat Finley Cay,” he told me. “Every summer we goin’ dat place to shoot pigeons. You can find good camping place on Finley Cay. De wahtah all round on de bank is shallow, an’ de big boat she can’t go, but you not to worry in dat canoe, mon.”
At his insistence, I followed him up the hill to his house, where he topped off my largest water container and showed me around the little village. It was a quiet Sunday morning, and most of the townspeople were attending services in the church, from which familiar hymns drifted out into the streets and took me back to childhood Sundays in south Mississippi. The few residents who were at home and saw me walking down their streets seemed startled, but friendly. It was obvious that few tourists visited this isolated community. I thanked the old man for his advice, and he told me that there was an excellent beach on the south end of Current Island, where I could camp while preparing to make my long crossing.
I made my way back down to the kayak and paddled the five miles on down to the end of the island before noon. The beach was as good as the old fisherman had claimed. Crystal clear water washed the soft white sands and beyond the seashore was a dense forest of cabbage palms, gumbo limbo, and sea grape trees. I climbed the lone coconut palm on the beach and pulled down the four green drinking nuts it bore. Climbing palms was easier since Ben and I had fashioned loops of nylon webbing to put around our ankles when we had climbed so much while gathering coconuts on Frozen and Alder Cays. With the ankles held loosely together, it was easy to rest while climbing by simply clamping the soles of the feet to the trunk. Once at the top, it was easier to pull the nuts down, since with the feet secured, it was safe to let go with one hand. I had also found that the tough stem that each coconut hangs from is easily severed by giving the nut a hard spin, which twists the stem until it breaks.
After unloading the kayak, I followed the example that Ben and his family had often set when we had come to an isolated beach, and stripped off all my clothes. It was the natural thing to do in such a perfect climate and in such complete solitude. Wearing only fins, mask, and snorkel, I took my new spear and headed to the reef in front of my campsite to find lunch. It was only a matter of minutes before I returned to the beach with a 6 or 7-pound jackfish, and I was soon frying thick fillets that I had first rolled in cornmeal. I ate until I was stuffed and still had fish left. Living off the sea here was going to be easy, I thought, as I spent the afternoon walking the beach and exploring the woods behind my tent.
The following day I paddled down to the south tip of the island and found that the seas were rough and the skies overcast. I decided not to try the crossing that day. I returned to my camp and spent the afternoon studying charts and dreaming of islands farther south, more tropical, and surely, I thought, even better than this wonderful place. This was the nature of my trip; it was all about keeping the kayak moving. I suppose if I had not thought what was over the horizon was going to be better, I could not have endured the hardships of going on. Here on Current Island, I had found perfect beauty and easy island living, but I was not content to stay.
I cooked an early dinner of brown rice, boiled in the water from two of the coconuts I had gathered. Pete Hill had told me about this trick when we were camped together in the Everglades. It was as good as he said it was, the sweet liquid giving the rice a custard-like flavor. I looked forward to experimenting with all the many uses of the coconut palm, that ubiquitous symbol of tropical islands that would be a part of my life for the duration of this journey.
My solitude was interrupted after dinner when a sailboat dropped anchor off my beach and three people came ashore in a dinghy. They were a couple from Washington D.C., vacationing with their teenage daughter. They told me they had chartered the boat for a week and planned to stay in this anchorage just one night. In the morning, after breaking camp and packing up, I paddled out to their yacht to bum a gallon of water so my supply would be topped off before I set off for remote Finley Cay.
I headed south from Current Island, towards the empty horizon where my chart showed that Finley Cay should be. On a solo crossing like this, it is difficult to have complete faith in charts and compass. As Current Island slowly receded into the distance behind me, I wondered if Finley Cay was really out there, 19 miles ahead. There was no evidence of it or any other land in the vast expanse of blue that stretched before me, yet the entire crossing would be over the shallow waters of the Yellow Banks, with average charted depths of less than 20 feet. Once beyond sight of Current Island, I could see no land in any direction, but the bottom was clearly visible as I glided over air-clear water. Isolated coral heads scattered here and there broke up the monotony of miles of sand bottom that looked like an underwater Sahara.
Finley Cay was so low that I could not see it until I was within about 5 miles of it. I did not reach its lonely beaches until almost 6 hours after leaving Current Island. Shallows of 2 feet or less extended more than a mile around the cay, making it impossible for deep draft vessels to approach. The kayak was the perfect craft for exploring such waters, and from the beaches of Finley Cay, I could see no sign of other boats or human activity in any direction. It was by far the most remote and isolated island I had ever visited, and it was a delight to walk the untouched shore and see no footprints or other sign that anyone had visited recently. In the tangled vegetation in the middle of the island, however, I found the remains of some kind of radio communications tower, obviously abandoned many years before.
The pink coral sand of Finley Cay was the softest I’d ever seen, so fine that walking through it was difficult. With each step I sank down past my ankles in it, and soon concluded that it was too exhausting to walk far in the stuff. I was tired from the crossing anyway, so I spent the afternoon near my kayak. That night I stretched out on the beach looking up into a sky jam-packed with stars – the kind of sky that can only be seen in a place far removed from the lights of mankind. The tiny speck of light from a passing jet was my only reminder that somewhere out there was a world where people have no idea pristine islands like this still exist.
I would have stayed a couple of nights on Finley Cay, but when I woke in the morning, I discovered that my largest water jug had leaked all night, leaving my supply too low to linger. I didn’t want to depend on the desalinator except in an absolute emergency, so that morning I embarked on the 14-mile crossing to North Sail Rocks, at the extreme north end of the Exuma Island chain. Most of the crossing would be over the Yellow Banks, but near the Exumas, the 900-fathom depths of Exuma Sound would be to my east. If I missed the island chain and went too far to the west, I would cross over the even deeper Tongue of the Ocean and the next landfall would be Andros Island, 60 miles away.
Halfway into the crossing, at a point where I was out of sight of land, a Bahamian fishing vessel motoring out of the south spotted me and changed course to intercept me. Apparently the crew saw me paddling the tiny boat and thought I was on a lifeboat of some sort and in need of rescue. As they came within hailing distance, all hands were on deck to see my strange vessel. They were all local islanders, who undoubtedly had never seen a sea kayak this far fr
om land.
“Where you goin’ in dat boat, mon?”
“Exumas!” I shouted in reply.
“Where you comin’ from, mon?”
“Eleuthera… Florida… Mississippi!”
The captain shook his head and informed me that I was crazy, but pointed in the direction I had already been heading and said, “Exumas dat weh, mon!”
They motored slowly away and I was alone again, squinting into a morning sun that passed through my sunglasses as if they weren’t there and burned my already deeply tanned face. I tied a wet bandana across my nose and pulled my wide-brimmed canvas hat down over my eyes as I continued the seemingly endless crossing. The sea was lifeless; no sign of another living creature on it, in it, or above the mirror-like surface. Not a breath of wind stirred. I was paddling in a mirage of nothingness that reflected every cloud above and blended indiscernibly with the sky on the horizon in every direction.
By mid-afternoon, I still had not sighted land and was beginning to get worried. A 14-mile crossing should have only taken 3 or 4 hours, since I was not fighting a headwind. I scanned the horizon in all directions, and directly to my left, to the east, I could make out what could be distant rocks, barely protruding into the otherwise empty horizon. A double check of my charts revealed that there should be no rocks to the east of my rhumb-line between Finley Cay and Sail Rocks, and careful scanning of the horizon in all directions revealed no other land in sight. Those rocks to the east had to be Sail Rocks, but it seemed impossible that I could have drifted so far off course. The only explanation was that an unseen and unfelt current had been bearing me steadily to the west as I paddled south. My instincts told me to keep paddling south, that those rocks couldn’t be Sail Rocks, but I forced myself to believe the charts and swung the bow of my kayak around and began paddling steadily towards the east. Two hours later, I neared the rocks and could see distant islands stretching away to the south and knew I was looking at the Exumas. It had been a close call. If I had not spotted the rocks and changed course, I would have been paddling a long time before I crossed the Tongue of the Ocean, and would have undoubtedly become more confused, with no reference to know my exact position.
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean Page 10
