We were surprised to find 8 other boats anchored behind Hog Cay when we arrived. Most of them anchor here, a 4 mile, each way, dinghy ride from Duncan Town. You can’t actually take the sailboats to Duncan Town – water is too shallow. There is only a shallow canal, through a mile of mangroves, that gives water access to the town. There was a Saturday night cruisers party, bon fire on the beach, jokes, name that tune, singalong with guitar, so we got to know everyone there.
We had a school of about 10 cuttle fish beside out boat one morning. They were small, babies I guess, maybe 4” long. The bodies were about the size/shape of dove eggs, HUGE eyes, tightly clasped tentacles behind their green-black bodies. They stayed together in a sphere shaped school. Luke startled them and they all shot out little jets of black ink at him. Very cute. Wish I could have gotten a picture of them.
Look at the size of these starfish, though!
The sound side of the island is the most beautiful that we’ve seen. The beach is wide, long, full of white sand, and gentle turquoise water, puffy white clouds, blue, blue sky. Just stunning.
The sound side also has cliffs, some 20 ft tall. They tell the force of the water when the wind blows from the west. It’s a rugged area, called the Ragged Islands. We understand why.
On the ocean (Atlantic) side of the island, it’s another story. Rough water coming in straight from across the Atlantic. These islands border the “Crooked Island Passage” a heavily traveled shipping lane into the Caribbean, that may contribute to the overwhelming amount of trash on the ocean facing beaches. Trash everywhere has washed up. It’s incredible what gets thrown into the ocean. I guess folks think it sinks….well, it doesn’t. It washes ashore somewhere. Just look at this. This beach is about 1/3 mile and completely full. It’s the worst we’ve seen but not the only one.
We did find 2 more pewter fishing floats, but I would trade them for a clean beach.
Friends Clark & Angie went hiking with us. We found a conch just at the shoreline, very unusual. So, we scooped him up and Clark agreed to show Luke how to get into the conch and get to the “meat”. Here’s Luke making his first cut to open the conch.
And the thing itself. Ugh. But I cleaned it up, cut it into small strips, pounded them flat with a meat hammer, put it in a tempura type wash, and fried it. Luke really liked it. I thought it was ok.
On Sunday we took the dinghy for the 4 mile ride into the settlement. Amazingly, the entire town has wireless internet (don’t know if they have computers except at the school). There is a gazebo that the cruisers use for internet. It even has electricity.
Here are examples of the homes. Again, very poor.
This house has no roof, but people are living in it.
There are a few nicer homes on the 2 streets, but they are in the minority.
There are many more derelict houses than ones being lived in.
The town was founded to provide salt from the salt pond in the middle of the island. That business has long since dried up, but the pond still shows evidence of the effort.
We did enjoy it there and want to go back and explore the nearby islands some more. We are limited by water. You can’t get water or diesel there, so you must do with what you take with you. For us, that’s 150 gallons. 3 or 4 days to get there, 3 days back to Long Island—that can give us about 10 more days that we could stay. But we have to be careful, because if the winds pick up from the wrong direction and we get stuck there for a week or so waiting for the weather, our water can run out. Most of the cruisers who stay there have water makers on their boats and I’m sure they would help in an emergency. But you can’t count on borrowed water. Water makers for boats run from $4500 - $15000. We won’t be putting one on Latitudes!
A quick explanation of the weather for you non-sailors: in the winter the Bahamas gets a new cold front about every 7 days. The winds generally blow from the east and with a cold front, clock around, south, west, north, and then back from the east. Almost always. The clocking can take several hours or a week. This direction and velocity of the wind determines where (and if) we can go. If the wind is blowing from the south and we need to go south, we have to sit and wait until it changes – can’t sail directly into the wind. If the wind is too high, we don’t want to go out in it. Where we spend each night is determined by the wind, too. If it’s blowing from the east, we need to find an anchorage that has a land mass between us and the east, so we can anchor on the west side and be protected from the winds. So, if we get a cold front and the wind blows from the “wrong” direction or too high for 4 days straight, we sit for 4 days straight. The winds become the determining factor for everything we do.
For the sailors – for the 100 mile trip down the Jumentos to Ragged Island, we had favorable winds. Our direction was generally south, and the winds varied from ENE to E to SSE. This gave us winds nearly on the beam, in the 18 to 22 kt range, yielding boat speeds of 7 to 8 kts, with a reefed main sail and full jib. We crossed the shallow banks on the west side of the chain of islands. This gave us 3 to 4 foot waves, sometimes higher is gaps between islands, and depths of 10 to 30 feet, clear blue water.
We sailed back, stopping at Flamingo Cay and Water Cay on our way to Long Island. Here is Latitudes in Paradise, all alone.
Back to Long Island, through the Carolina Blue sky, white white clouds, and shallow turquoise water. Just to beautiful to be true.
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