Squally Staniel Cay

Yesterday nephew Zachary left us and flew off to the second part of his winter break. Instead of being crammed aboard Cupcake with the four of us, he will now spend a week with 6,000 of his closest friends aboard a massive cruise ship departing from Florida, headed to the Caribbean.

We envy him the time he spends with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece. Also the hot showers and fresh fruit. But we are not so sure about the rest of the cruise experience. His boat will have almost as many people aboard as our home town, Freeport, Maine.

In any event, Simon and I took Zachary in Mr. Flowerpot to get him to the airport on time. Along the way we braved 20+ knot winds and white capped seas. With luggage, bags of trash, and the three of us in the dinghy, we decided it made sense to leave the girls back on the mother ship.

The Staniel Cay airport is a trip. The “terminal” is pretty much a worn out covered picnic pavilion. There is no security. Simon asked me if it was like air travel pre-9/11 and he is correct. Airport vehicles were all golf carts. The planes looked like they were built by a 7-year old using LEGOs. 

We pulled the dinghy up to a dock conveniently located about 100 yards from the airstrip. As the boys were tying us up, some people we met in Highbourne Cay came hustling down the dock looking hassled. They told us all flights were cancelled for the day because of high winds and they had to go to the next island to catch a flight back to the US. I asked how they were getting to Black Point and they said by dinghy. Yikes. In Mr. Flowerpot it was a bouncy, windy, wet ride from the anchorage a mile away. Zachary was reluctant to get back in the dinghy for the 10 minute ride from where we had lunch to the airport. Didn’t want to get soaked again. (Also, in the US it would definitely have been a Small Craft Advisory kind of day. (Landlubbers: since Cupcake qualifies as a small craft, little Mr. Flowerpot definitely does.))

The boys hustled to the airport office to get the full scoop (the office is less organized than the main lodge at summer camp on registration day) and found out only one of the two carriers cancelled flights. Zachary was good to go. He had mixed feeling about that turn of events. 

We watched a few planes land and a couple more take off. When landing, the planes would hit the tarmac with a chirp of tires, jounce into the air again, and then land with another chirp and wiggle. The ones taking off would jolt into the air, then get hit by a gust and bounce down with a surprising lurch and chirp of tires, then lunge aloft for good. Simon showed no compassion for his already-nervous cousin and made all manner of dark predictions. Unfortunately we didn’t bring the camera. If we had, we would definitely have taken a photo of the kickstand the pilot put in place as soon as the little craft landed. It was a pole that held up the back of the plane and kept the aircraft from tipping up onto its tail as the passengers got off and the weight shifted. Sketchy. And really funny to those of us traveling by boat.

Zachary’s plane took of on time with no issues, stopped at Congo Town on the island of Andros, then landed in Fort Lauderdale a full hour ahead of schedule thanks to pretty brisk tail winds the whole way.

Here’s a confession (not a dirty little secret): two equipment-selection errors I made on this trip were not getting a bigger outboard for the dinghy and not getting a higher-capacity water maker. I chose a 5hp outboard because it is light and doesn’t have an external gas tank. Turns out the weight is not an issue because we use a block and tackle/hoist to get the engine on and off Cupcake. And my external tank hangup is silly since we always travel with a spare gallon of fuel in the dinghy. Should have gotten an engine of at least 9hp. 15hp would have been even better. (Guests are welcome to bring us either size engine when visiting.)

Our loyal Mr. Flowerpot.

And the water maker works great when we run it all day while motoring or in full sunlight, but this week in particular, we could use higher output since our consumption has been significantly greater than usual. Unfortunately, with the cloudy skies above and extra people aboard, we’ve had to run the engine daily to generate electricity while we run the water maker. We make water out of electricity. And without the sun, we need to make electricity out of diesel. That fourth solar panel we had no room for last summer seems like something we could work into our repertoire these days. Ah well.

Yesterday evening we visited and had drinks with Ungava a 45’ Beneteau we’ve been seeing off and on since northern Florida. The boat is nearly brand new and comes with a manufacturer’s warranty. The warranty on Cupcake, a 32 year old boat, works like this: Ellen says, “Don, the ____ broke. When are you going to fix it?” (Don is the name Ellen uses for me when I am in maintenance mode. We started the tradition when we were visiting our friends Tom and Delwyn aboard their lovely boat Mahalo in Guadeloupe a few years ago. Tom was complaining about the maintenance a boat requires and said his wife Delwyn didn’t even bother to learn his name, that she just said things like “Oh Tim, the head is clogged, would you take care of it while I go ashore for baguettes?” And “Oh Tim, the outboard is acting funny. When you’ve fixed the head, have a look at it will you?” (Tom and Delwyn will be visiting in a few weeks and we can’t wait to host them.)

Today we relaxed, read, and waited for the winds to drop out of the mid-20s so we could go for a nice snorkel. When I was fussing with laundry drying on the lines this morning I saw a shark cruise under the boat. Not sure if it was a friendly nurse shark or a hungry bull shark. Going to pretend it was definitely a nurse shark.

We checked out a nearby cave in the limestone along the shore, saw some fishies, then swam to a nearby beach where a bunch of cruisers were hanging around. Sent Simon back to Cupcake to fetch us some Coronas. Kids, dogs, beer, sand, sun…pretty good stuff.

Met a 25 year old ex-police officer from New Hampshire who quit his job, sold his house, bought a 43’ catamaran, and sailed away with his wife, two kids, dog, and a buddy. (The boat is big enough that the buddy gets his own hull, not just his own room.) I explained to Simon that I liked every part of that story except the “wife and two kids by 25” part.

Yesterday Ellen baked two loaves of bread and put together an antipasto plate for dinner. Tonight it’s lamb stew with potatoes. Moss is maintaining her mood with a stop-gap snack of miso soup. Tomorrow I am going to try very hard to catch a fish or lobster for dinner.

A pair of southern stingrays (dasyatis americana) lurking in the sand. Check out what are probably sharksuckers (echenesis naucrates) attached to each one. The rays are probably at least 3’ across.

Queen angelfish (holacanthus ciliaris) and maybe some kind of gobie (gobiidae). We don’t love our little digital camera above the water because it takes very dark pictures. But underwater it does great.

Cute Ellen taking time for a selfie while patching Simon’s favorite pair of jeans.