Best Field Trip Ever!

After the evening of entertainment, both Jazzman (Vic's aptly named catamaran) and Live Now sailed south to Little Farmer's Cay. They were off the next morning to get someone to the airport. We stayed for a couple of days. Not much was going on on Little Farmer's Cay, but we did have a nice lunch at the yacht club. We had called on the VHF radio for reservations for lunch, and by the time we got there, it was ready. We ate on a covered veranda and enjoyed the view, once again the only customers. The manager of the club, Roosevelt Nixon, a distinguished gentleman (that's what I call guys about my age) talked to us about the history of the island. Some 'Loyalists' settled here during the American Revolutionary War. Roosevelt, named after the U.S. president and no relation to, or namesake of, Richard Milhouse Nixon, told us that his father used to come to Little Farmers for fishing and recreation. The 'recreation', he implied, took the form of courting one of the number of pretty women who resided on the island at the time. His father eventually married a local girl after a couple of begats, begat Roosevelt.

The original settlers apparently had bought the Cay with the idea of becoming cotton and sisel farmers, but nothing grows well there~~too many rocks and too much sand. However, you can still see wild versions of both crops in vacant fields around the island. With a wide screen TV in the background, we discussed the coming U.S. election and other current events. We have always found that people from other countries know quite alot more about us and what we're up to than we know about them, and they seem quite well informed. In the Bahamas that may be due to the fact that CNN and Fox News seem to dominate the airways. The TV satellite offers primarily U.S. programming.

We needed to wait for a 'weather window', to make our run to George Town, about 40 miles away. Even though the weather was delightful, we needed to have a west or south of east wind to make an easy passage on the Exuma Sound. To date our Exuma travels kept us to the Exuma Banks side of the island chain. This is protected, shallow water with numerous safe anchorages. Just south of Little Farmers Cay, the Banks become impassably shallow for even moderate draft vessels. Reaching George Town requires exiting the Banks at one of the 'Cuts' (such as Big Rock Cut at Little Farmers) or channels to the Sound. An easterly wind blowing strong over several days can create what's known as a "Rage"; breaking water across the entire Cut. Some Rages set up walls of water 4' high. On top of that, there are no safe anchorages on the Sound side. Although I was game to try it :) John wasn't. So we had a couple of days to just poke around. John suggested we get in the dinghy and go exploring. We ride along the shore for awhile , and I'm wondering where he is going, but don't say anything because I'm enjoying the ride. I'm blisfully unaware of the fact that he actually has a place in mind that he wants to check out. I'm kind of suspicious when he turns and begins to head out into what looks like just plain ocean. But, trusting soul that I am, I just keep my mouth shut. Before long, I spied something out in the water which kept getting bigger and bigger. It seems like it took ages to get there, but there it was, an island in the making, about 20 feet wide, a mile and a half long, and about 3 feet high at low tide.

We pulled our dinghy up on the sand and were greeted by roseate terns, gulls and other sea birds, a rather large southern sting ray (five feet in diameter, lurking in 1' of water near the shore), and a two foot long baracuda (another lurker). And shells! No one goes there, so there were shells galore just ripe for the picking. It made me feel like a grade school kid on a field trip, where the teacher tells us that in another hundred years or so this will be the newest island in the Bahamas chain, and here we are to testify to the fact that we saw it first! We spent a couple of hours walking both shorelines (sometimes with one foot on each shore), picking up conch shells, sand dollars and other curiosities before heading back. All in all a great field trip. The only down side is that John made me to do a field trip report and do a shell presentation.