We explored Compass Cay area climbing the 92’ “Compass
Peek,” high point of the island. Nearby
is the remains of an old US Navy Decca station that you can poke around. Decca,
according to a military online definition, stands for Department of Commerce
and Community Affairs, but in googling it I rather liked the one that said it
stood for “Dedicated Englishmen causing chaos abroad.” Anyway, it’s another ghost
town and evidently was a very small station.
Launch for Navy vessels at the Decca site.
A nice morning’s sail took us next to Staniel Cay which was
to be a resupply town. The boat had not come recently though so fresh food was
slim and prices were high. According to one guidebook, this town is known for
the August National Bahamas Sunfish Regatta and it has a nice yatch club with
some cute bungalows you could stay in on the shore. Inland though it’s more the
typical Bahamian village with pastel colored homes, some occupied, some empty..
One of the big draws here is a dock at the marina where they feed the
sharks and you can get in, swim with them and pet them. I took lots of pictures
but skipped the up close and personal part.
These are nurse sharks.
We think this restaurant in town ought to consider either
changing their name or their pet policy.
A short dinghy ride to Big Majors Cay brought us to one of
the most unusual sightings of the trip. Pigs! I have not been able to find out
where these pigs came from or when, but this is a very popular place for
cruisers to visit. Warning: don’t let them near your dinghy or they will
puncture it and there’s a graveyard of dinghies to prove it!
Next stop is one of my favorites so far, Black Point Settlement.
This village is on Great Guana Cay and it seems that almost everyone in town
makes straw baskets. We saw both men and women sitting on the street or in
front porches weaving straw baskets.
First stop here was the Rockside Laundramat, a lovely
facility that beats any US laundromat I’ve used. Wifi outside (which wasn’t
working) and you could dink right up to their dock, so very handy.
The dock is also a stopping spot for local fishermen.
Since we had not caught any yet, we couldn’t resist relieving the guys of two
of them.
Down the street was the school. This is a K-9 school after
which students finish high school in Nassau. They all wear uniforms, green
shirts and skirts for girls, pants for boys, and the older boys wore ties!
Very, very polite and every child I saw greeted me. The school is also the
place to drop off donations. They need everything and we took them clothes,
towels, snorkel gear and two sleeping bags, all of which were in close to mint
condition and left behind by campers at Bahia Honda in Florida. The principal was
especially excited about the tents and told me they had just been talking about
need some.
Black Point school
Volunteering at the school was Sharon Taylor who was
watching some youngsters at recess outside. I saw her weaving and learned that
she, like most, began straw work at age 5. She invited me to come to her house
later and look at her baskets. When I went I not only got to see baskets, but
she was also making a “benny cake,” a Bahamian Christmas cake, for her visiting
US daughter and she gave me some fresh and hot out of the oven. I asked what
was in it and she replied, “sugar.” That’s about right! But add seeds, coconut,
cinnamon and who knows what else. Yum!
A walk down the road too us to the cruiser reported Garden
of Eden. Like a lot here, expectations were American, reality was Bahamian.
Here the Garden of Eden.
Three afternoons a week, Scorpio’s has a cruiser’s happy
hour where drinks were 2 for 1. We met several other couples here and enjoyed
the rum punch, 3-parts killer rum, 1-part punch at prices you couldn’t touch in
the US!
One of our friendly bar tenders at Scorpio’s.
Time to move on south to Little Farmers Cay. A walk over the usual
mix of sharp limestone and sand took us to a cave that some dive. We just
walked a short way into the entrance, knee deep in water very quickly to the magic
of living caves.
Our anchorage was off the beach across from Ty’s Sunset
Grill. I’m getting into the dinghy mode of transport, barefoot and sandy toes.
We were the only four customers that night. The service was friendly, the vege
pizza good and the sunset lovely.
The next day was one of the most amazing on the trip so far.
It began with Renee’s famous lobster omelets with Ryan’s fresh caught lobster.
Then we dinked to the other side of the island to a small marina
on Little Farmers. This marina is Bahamian owned and run and when they saw us
coming in, they began beating a club on the dock, the sign for turtles that
they are ready to feed! There were plenty of turtles, but also nurse sharks,
rays and a puffer fish.
Dock at Cap’n Conch marina.
The railing is local tamarind
that was stained and polished; beautiful wood.
Lee Stocking was our next stop. On the Atlantic side, there
is a place to snorkel with big elk horn coral field. I might call it moose
rather than elk, but you get the idea. It appeared almost gold sometimes in the
sunlight under water. Beautiful! Some good fish too, but mostly this is about
the coral.
This brain coral was about 4-foot tall.
Our Lee Stocking anchorage was directly across from an
abandoned Caribbean Marine Research Station. John Perry purchased Lee Stocking
in 1957 and founded the Perry Institute for Marine Science that included “a tropical
marine laboratory equipped to study the coral reefs, fisheries, ecosystems and
underwater biodiversity of the region, as well as facilities to develop manned
and unmanned submersibles.” In 1984, it became part of NOAA’s Undersea Research
Program conducting scuba and submersibles dives. Somewhere around 2012 its
grant ran out, funding dried up and everyone just left. Transporting
materials was too expensive so things were simply left there and soon
scavengers relieved the facility of many portable, practical items. There was a
caretaker for a time who, in a report from 2014, indicated the island had been
sold to a German who wants to develop it, but today it is a delightful ghost
town to wander through.
There were a few large houses, some with furniture and beautiful
tile in bathrooms.
This would have been a good back porch view.
The abandoned pickup needs a little repair.
There were sandy roads, one lined with coconut palms, and
we restocked our supplies with
fresh coconuts finally. It looks like the place
was once beautifully landscaped.
A map in one building showed locations of a main lab,
lobster lab, analytical lab, weather monitor station and a reverse osmosis
plant.
Another cold front was predicted with extremely high winds,
so south we go to Georgetown, but not before catching a couple dolphin (mahi)
for dinner.
