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The World Cruise of Veleda IV |
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Exumas - Darby Islands, March 13 - 18, 1999 As mentioned in my last log, we took the inside route weaving through the shallow banks. The GPS does a good job, but radar would sure be useful, I suspect, to locate oneself relative to the land features. Weaving around the coral heads and the many cays, trying to stay in the deepest channel, and not having a firm grasp of where deeper water is if running into difficulties (i.e. hitting bottom) with a defective depth sounder does not make for a relaxing trip. However, we did notice a considerable amount of development on a couple of the cays with multi-million dollar condominiums and marinas going up. A secure bay was chained off as there were barges and dredges in it setting up a private marina. The cays just north of the Darbys had interesting limestone and coral cliffs into which several openings and shallow, but large caves had been carved. As we felt our way past in Veleda we noted them for dinghy exploration later. There were a couple of Canadian boats at anchor in the wide bays of these islands, but we were headed for the Darbys. To get into the anchorage at the Darbys we had to pass the opening north of them and work our way close to the shoreline around the headland on the northwest corner and into a narrow but deep channel between the two islands. We saw the private dock, and were going to go past it into the more sheltered anchorage which lay beyond it between the two islands. No boats so far, not even at the private dock. However as we came up abreast of the dock we saw a trawler and a catamaran anchored inside, and were not sure if there was swinging room in the narrow channel for us. I made a quick decision not to go in, and turned around in front of the dock to anchor with a Bahamian mooring in the narrow outer channel. Even though we were at two anchors, I was concerned that as the tide swung us, we might find ourselves touching the edges of the bank. However, it proved to be a good anchorage, although exposed to a fierce northwest wind of the 35 to 40 knot variety a couple of days later when a front went through. But the anchors held well and although it was open to winds from the northwest quadrant, there was minimal wave action as a result of the shallow banks outside the anchorage. The channel was deep, and inside past the dock it was quite steep to as this was the area dredged to accommodate German submarines during World War Two. Bob Parnoff of the trawler "Meme", anchored inside, dropped over to introduce himself. He anchors there for five months a year as a nautical snowbird, and has done so for several years. He periodically takes his trawler down to Georgetown for major supplies, but spends the winter at anchor between the Darbys, and sails back up the ICW in the spring for the summer back home in Connecticut, I think it was.  He had a considerable amount of local knowledge which he shared with us, as well as a couple of conchs which he gave us. This gift provided us our first opportunity to open a conch shell, clean it, and cook it. We had seen conchs opened and cleaned at Potters Cay in Nassau, and knew the basic procedure, but this was our first real challenge. To open and clean them, a hole has to be broken at the back of the shell at the spiral end, and a knife inserted to cut the tendons attaching the conch to its shell. Then it can be removed by pulling it out by the operculum, a plate of shell that allows the conch to block its opening. The locals can open and clean a conch in about two minutes or less, but these first ones took us 15 minutes for each one. It was O.K. in that we weren't squeamish about it, but we did not have the proper tools. I had to hammer in a flat-head screw driver to make the opening in the shell. Then the hole wasn't wide enough and I had to try to widen it so I could insert a knife to cut the tendons from the shell. Pounding the shell was complicated by not having a solid platform on which to hit it. The fibreglass on the foredeck was not designed for that kind of pounding. However, we finally got the conch out and cleaned, and had an enjoyable white conch chowder for supper.The two islands are owned by a group of American doctors who only visit occasionally. They are maintained by a resident caretaker, Calvin, whom we met the second day we were there. The original owner, who set up the green mansion and the submarine dock on the westward island, died twenty or thirty years ago. The mansion has not been occupied for about fifteen years or so, and has fallen into disrepair. The concrete docks for the subs are eroding a bit, but the abutments and concrete anchoring posts can still be seen. No subs actually used this facility, as the entrance from the sound was too shallow. The dock which is presently being used for the owners is on the eastern island, and is in good repair. An Alberg 30 was tied up on the inner side and belongs to an Italian who has left it there for a year or so. Calvin uses a fibreglass Boston Whaler with a fifty horsepower motor for running up and down the Exumas. We saw him struggling with it on the ramp, and went over to help him and to introduce ourselves. He had a large hole in the transom and wanted to take off the motor and prepare the hull for a major fibreglassing. He invited us up to his apartment above the dockhouse and shared his lunch of "soused conch" with us. We had not had conch done this way, and since we enjoyed it so much, got the recipe for it (conch, onion, hot pepper, water, salt, lime juice: boil together for about twenty minutes). Calvin was a very friendly gentleman in his early 40's. He told us about himself, his family and the islands, and expressed a willingness to show us around. That afternoon he asked us to help him fill a water barrel from a cistern in the main villa up on the island. He took us in an old pickup truck up to the airstrip and the five main villas on a hill at the northwest end of the island. There was a large central villa on a solid concrete base with garage, workshop, storage rooms and electrical/plumbing control panels on the ground level. We helped him position a barrel in the back of the truck into which he put a hose and started filling from a cistern fed from the roofs of the five buildings. While this was filling we were invited to wander around the villas to see the layout. Fantastic! They were at the top of a hill about 150 feet above the water. We could see Veleda anchored down in the channel about 200 feet from the dock. The four sleeping villas around the main building were on stilts above the tree and brush levels, and were joined to the main building by wooden walkways also suspended on stilts. These "outhouses" were open to the winds on all four sides, with screened-in porches with beautiful vistas overlooking the channel from the ocean side, airy open bedrooms with full bathrooms, beds with white mosquito netting canopies, native works of art, mirrored dressers, and low cabinets with large TV's. The main villa was an open design concept with sunken lounge area looking out a wide balcony, a full kitchen, a dining table that would seat twenty people a master bedroom with full bathroom, and more large pieces of native art on the walls. Staying in such luxury would not be hard to take, although it was used for only a few weeks or months per year. The next day we went for a dinghy ride between the islands down to a wide sandy bay where we went beachcombing. Soon, I started finding small conch, too small to harvest. As I walked out into the water , larger conch were found. Soon I was walking through an underwater field of hundreds of conch in about two feet of water. Judy and I harvested (not caught, as conch don't move very fast) about twenty mature conch that we took back to Sprite. When we got back to Veleda, we put them in a net bag and hung them over the side in the water to stay fresh until we were ready to eat them. But I had to get a machete to be able to open them more efficiently. We made such a purchase a couple of days later when we got down to Georgetown, the cruisers' Mecca on Great Exuma about which I will tell in my next log. (Editor's note: At this point, we are missing a few logs for the balance of Veleda's cruise in the Bahamas. We hope to have these from Aubrey eventually. We shall pick up their cruise in Fort Lauderdale, whence they return to prepare for the jump to Bermuda) |
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Links:
Bahamas Net
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