Well, now we were faced with some itinerary choices: do we book it to the north end of the Exumas on our own and then head to Eleuthera and then the Abaco chain before returning to Florida or do we travel more slowly for a week and stay with the remaining boats a while longer and return via Bimini and then Florida? If we were truly adventurous, we would have gone off on our own but the truth is, we really like the folks we’ve been traveling with and we’re just not ready to say goodbye. We can visit those islands another time but might never have the good fortune to sail with these good folks again. If we’ve learned anything during this year+ of Covid, it’s all about spending time with friends and family that really matters.
So off we four boats sailed, back to Darby, an island near David Copperfield’s Musha Cay that I wrote about earlier. We explored a shallow lagoon by dinghy as the receding tide quietly exposed more and more of the sand, Mother Nature’s version of a cable knit sweater pattern:
Sheri from Fantasea spied another treasure of the sea—a stranded octopus! Fearing that it would die in the drying sand, she picked up the seemingly lifeless white creature and placed it gently back in the water. At first there was no movement but slowly, slowly, it began to change color to match the darker wet sand. After observing it for a while, it became clear that it preferred to be in the darker water created by Sheri’s shadow. So once the octopus began to show more movement, she “walked” it to even deeper water by moving her shadow slowly and carefully along the shore, prodding the octopus to safety. Sheri the Octopus Whisperer.
(If you don’t see the videos below (or any of the others in my past posts) on your phone, you can click on “web version” at the very bottom of the post on your phone, or check it out on a tablet or computer screen.)
And finally the little guy swam away, flexing his legs to propel himself back to the sea.
David and I walked around the edge of the lagoon, still (after three months of exploring) fascinated by the way the rocks wear away and the shoreline weathers.
There were shells and mollusks hidden in holes that seemed to have been carved out just for them. What a great place to for an Easter egg hunt!
Our next anchorage was only 11 miles away but a world of difference. Little Farmer’s Cay (3.5 miles long) is a “particularly lovely and lively cay surviving on spunk and an independent, self-sufficient populace,” according to our cruising guide. There are only about 70 residents with a small settlement featuring a couple of restaurants, a one-room grocery store and JR Tinker’s woodcarving gallery.
We learned a bit about this tiny island’s history. A freed slave from Barraterre settled on the island in the 1800’s with her two sons, Michael Joseph Nixon and Adam Brown, who later purchased the island from the British Crown. Michael had 13 children and Adam had 5. They willed the island to their descendants who are the only people who can build on the island and cannot sell to outsiders.
It was very quiet when we arrived as it was Palm Sunday. Everything was closed and folks were home with their families for church services and family dinner. We were the only visitors that day but found our way to the Ocean Cabin. We were fortunate to find Terry Bain, owner and renowned raconteur who opened up to provide us with his special rum punch although, since it was his daughter’s day off, couldn’t offer us dinner until tomorrow. We promised to return the next day.
Now, about his special rum punch—we had to guess the five ingredients which, admittedly took us a few minutes but we finally succeeded: blue curaçao, coconut water, rum, pineapple juice and the secret ingredient (don’t tell anyone), grapefruit juice. I liked the color the best, same as the Bahamian blue sea.
Terry regaled us with story after story until our sides were splitting. Really, the guy should do a stand up comedy act! He is also the founder of the Five Fs Festival, a regatta and festival held on the First Friday of February at Farmer’s Cay. We’d like to come back next year to see the racing of traditional Bahamian sloops with their giant sails. We did go back for dinner the next night at Ocean Cabin, as promised. The lobster (with special sauce, of course) was delicious, Terry and his wife taught us the Little Farmer’s Cay national anthem, and a good time was had by all. Sailors from all over have visited this unique spot and we now know why!
The next day we sailed to Black Point on Great Iguana Cay, the spot we hated to leave back on February 28. Of course, we did our laundry, had the buffet dinner at Lorraine’s and bought four loaves of bread from her mother. David had his hair cut at the laundry and Stick made us all loaded foot-long hotdogs for $5 a piece. We even got cabbage and peppers at Adderley’s Grocery. Honestly, it felt like coming home. What a welcoming community! We looked forward to the regatta on the Saturday before Easter, services on Sunday, and the egg hunt for the kids on Easter Monday. But then the blow struck and we had to miss it all as the wind howled and the rain poured down and we didn’t leave the boat. Maybe next year.
My father’s mother, Grammie Benson, held an Easter egg hunt every year for all her grandchildren with real colored eggs—none of those plastic eggs filled with candy for her, no sir! Since I lived next door to her (in the house she had been born in back in 1882), I helped dye the eggs for many years. However, since they were always brown eggs, it wasn’t until she got a color TV in the mid-1960s that I realized how brightly colored the eggs were supposed to be!
There were white eggs available in Black Point so I hard boiled six of them to make our Easter morning more festive. The only problem—no dye. Fortunately, the WiFi in Black Point is pretty strong so I searched for directions on dying eggs naturally. Unfortunately, there were neither onions, blueberries, nor spinach available. So I tried the recipes using teabags, paprika, turmeric, red wine, and substituted kale for the spinach. Truthfully, it was pretty stinky and not very successful, but I had fun trying. Looking back on the photos, I guess in truth, I spent the day turning white eggs brown.....How Grammie would laugh!
On Monday we bade farewell to Happy Together, Buiochas, and our lead boat, Equinox. Fantasea and Onward headed northward to Highbourne, West Bay on New Providence (the island where Nassau is) and finally on to Bimini. It was very difficult to say goodbye but we promised to meet up again next year for more adventures together!
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