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The World Cruise of Veleda IV |
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Eleuthera, (Part 3) Bahamas. February 1999 Written at Little Bell Island. We enjoyed another two days in Royal Island Harbour doing some snorkelling in the old shallow harbour on the north side of the island. It was a shallow reef with a fair number of tropical fish around, but the living underwater garden was intriguing. There were areas on the bottom covered with hundreds of undulating circular jellyfish lying upside down on the bottom with grassy centres and waving outer transparent skirts wafting in and out in a combination of their own primitive rhythms and the to and fro motion of the water currents. It was a living, moving undersea garden of saucer-like plants sitting on the bottom. We waited for a frontal passage to blow itself out, and left while it was still blowing 15 to 20 knots but in a favourable direction. We headed south easterly under a single reefed main and #3 genoa across to Current Cut about one hour before high tide. There was still a considerable current going through the cut, but was quite manageable under motor power. Once through this tricky cut with its dog leg on the south side, we put up the full main and genoa for a fast broad reach the remaining 20 miles across to Hatchet Bay. It was "nowheresville"! A sleepy marina on one side with the ruins of the HATCHET BAY YACHT CLUB behind it, a closed general store / liquor store, a water bottling plant, and the impoverished fishing community of Alice Town on the south shore made up this less than inspiring location. However, the holding in the bay was secure. The marina had an old Pontiac available for rent for $60.00 a day, which we took advantage of to drive around the rest of Eleuthera. There was no insurance on the old clunker, and I don’t know what would have happened if we had an accident, especially considering that they drive on the left side of the road here as they do in England, even though 95 % of the vehicles are left hand drive as they are back home. We drove up to the north end to the Glass Window, a high bridge which spans a narrow canyon cutting the island in two with the restless Atlantic to the east, and on the other side the emerald waters of the Bight of Eleuthera, a narrow band of rock just above low tide level separating the two bodies of water. It was fascinating seeing the savage waters of the Atlantic pounding on the east side and the more tranquil waters of the Bight on the west.  We
continued on up north a few more miles to the strung out communities of
Upper and Lower Bogues, then back down to a lovely little fishing community
called Gregory Town. There we bought a half dozen conch from the docks where
a group of young black fishermen were cleaning them. They only cost $1.00
each and were large and fresh. I have really developed a taste for conch
done in many ways, from conch salads and fritters to conch stews and soups.
I made a lovely white conch stew/soup in the pressure cooker, one of our
favourite recipes. We also got some hot sauce made locally in Gregory Town,
called "Pirates Revenge". It adds nicely to many recipes. I wish
we had gotten a larger bottle of it. However one of the items for which
Gregory Town is known was not available: pineapple. Not even some of their
lovely pineapple rum! Oh well, it was out of season and we could get
pineapple rum elsewhere in Eleuthera.We then drove 30 miles south, past Hatchet Bay down to Governor’s Harbour, the capital town of Eleuthera. It was a pleasant tourist oriented community nestled along the harbour and up into the surrounding hills. We got some more groceries and liquor, including pineapple rum, while there. Driving further down we went through a few small hamlets that time has passed by, and a luxury home development past Palmetto Point which is not yet finished, and judging from the partial sea wall and the "Yacht Basin" with no yachts, is probably going to stay in that state of incomplete development. At least there are a number of large beautiful homes in which people are living, not like several other condominium and resort developments which have gone bankrupt and are now in ruins. We topped up with a couple of gallons of gas at $2.50 a gallon before heading back. No mileage was noted on our rental agreement, but the tank was running low and we did not want to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere. As you can tell from my description, the main island of Eleuthera is not one of my favourite places in the Bahamas. On our way back, we stopped at Governor’s Harbour to watch the sunset, then drove on back to Hatchet Bay, stopping at a lovely resort for supper, Linda’s treat. We left the car at the marina and dinghy'd out to Veleda, ready for an early start the next day to Powell Point, the southwesterly tip of Eleuthera. On February 16 we had a lovely sail most of the way down with a nice 15 knot southeasterly breeze. We had to be careful the last 5 miles or so as we had to cross some shoal areas to get over to Cape Eleuthera Marina. The entrance was straightforward and the marina was large and deep, with sea walls and docks all around an excavated yacht basin. It only cost $15.00 for the night with no electricity. There were also no showers, laundromat, or even heads! It was another one of those ambitious resort/condominium developments that went bust. On one side of the yacht basin there was a condominium of a half dozen units being used and in good shape with docks at their front doors. However, the marina on the other side consisted of an office resurrected from an abandoned resort chalet, a half dozen slips with power and another dozen or so slips without, several of which were occupied by local Bahamian fishing boats that were badly leaking fuel and polluting the basin. A couple of fishermen, including a boater, had been successful in their fishing and were cleaning their catch on dockside cleaning stations, throwing the remains into the basin. This added an extra point of interest as there were two or three 10 to 12 foot sharks milling around the chum, feeding themselves. I had this sight in mind when I went over the peninsula to snorkel in a small blue hole just off shore. It was nothing of interest other than a 20 foot wall underwater that looked man-made and did not contain much sea life.  While supper was being prepared I went for a walk down some of the paved roads -- all abandoned, with decaying resort chalets with caved-in roofs, barren walls with electrical boxes torn out, and everything overgrown with weeds, palmetto palms, and a variety of tropical foliage. There were at least 30 of these decaying chalets scattered along a few miles of paved road, much of it lined with conch shells and palms, now wild but showing how it had initially been nicely landscaped. It was a sad situation to see a resort development become a ghost town, which, 25 years ago, was a luxurious enterprise. We left early the next day at 0700 for a heavy motor sail over to the Exumas and Allens Cay of the iguana lizards, but six-foot waves in 10-foot shallows dotted with coral heads forced a change in destination. More about the beautiful Exumas in our next log. Aubrey and Judy |
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