March 28, 2008

At Anchor, Allens’s Cay

Exuma Islands , Bahamas

24 – 45.09N

76 – 56.22W

Bright Colors and Monsters of the Beach

We are currently hunkered down in the small anchorage at Allen’s Cay, one of the northern most islands of the Exumas. On yesterday’s SSB weather net, Chris Parker (he is the weather guru in the Bahamas) predicted squalls by noon followed by 25-30 kts last night, 25-30 today and 20-25 tomorrow. He was actually a little late as the bad weather actually came in about 3 hours late but was every bit as predicted. So last night was an all night anchor watch, with each of us switching off every few hours to make sure we were staying in place and that no one was dragging down on us. Every boat was on the same alert status and all night you could see spotlights spotting other boats and the shore line. You can see clearly from the picture of the track on our chart plotter taken this morning our initial anchorage and the shift when the wind hit last night. You can also clearly see how close the anchorage is to the breach and the adjacent sand bar. A little tight, but not uncommon in the Bahamas.

The reason we are here in this small, exposed anchorage is to see the rock iguanas for which Allen’s Cay and adjacent Leaf Cay are famous. The beach is covered with them every day as they await the tourists who might have a tasty hand out, or maybe a tasty ankle to nip. Some of them are over two feet long and they all seem to be a little pudgy from the constant feeding. I don’t know how many beaches there are in the world that are covered with what look like miniaturized dinosaurs, but these iguanas make Allen’s Cay a stop over point for most cruisers and a destination for tour boats from Nassau.

Although we have been in the Bahamas for over a month now, we are still amazed by the intense color of the place, both natural and man made. The clear aqua colored water burns with color, the beaches are bright white and the buildings are ablaze with color. Even in Spanish Wells, Georges Cay where there is a certain monotony to the place, it is still alive with color. The monotony there comes from the sameness of the buildings (mostly painted stucco boxes with hip roofs), of the people (almost exclusively white with foreign sounding accents we could not really place), of the music (only country western?!?!?!) and lack of a good times atmosphere (The whole town is dry. There was once a liquor store but is mysteriously burned to the ground. There are a lot of churches.) More like rural Florida than the Bahamas.

But a fast ferry (literally) ride to nearby Dunmore Town on Harbour Island brings the Bahamas back into sharp focus.

Dunmore Town faces a shallow bay that limits access by deeper draft boats and to get to the town at all one must go through “Devil’s Backbone”, a twisting route through numerous coral heads on the ocean shoreline. All of the guide books recommend the use of a local pilot to get through the backbone. The beauty of this small town overcomes the difficulties of reaching it and it has remained a popular destination for cruisers and tourists alike.

The town contains a nice mix of local, tourist, upscale and low, and all appear to function well side by side. Here you will find small, simple frame structures as well as more affluent homes and resorts with neither over powering the other. Almost every building shows pride of ownership with the more simple structures made more dramatic with the use of brilliant color and the larger structures blended in by attention to scale and masking through use of landscape, There is a wonderful, very upscale resort on the east shore that you could easily drive by without noticing it at all. This blending is made a great deal easier by the fact that there are few automobiles on the island and most transportation is by small motorcycle or golf cart. Even trucks needed for transportation of goods are tiny by comparison to the US. All that this means is that even a fair sized hotel is not identifiable by a large parking lot. No need for one so even these have postage stamp sized lots.

It is the combination of color that catches your eye. Bright pinks and aqua, pale green, blue and yellow. Multiple colors on single buildings. Bright color is every where. The houses, the clothes, the vegetation, the food…….all lively and vibrant. And it all looks so natural and proper here. As we traveled north this summer we would see the odd house in North Carolina or Virginia or Maryland that looked so very out of place painted in “Florida” colors of pink or coral. But is all looks so right down here.

I used to think it was the sun. The location had to have a tropical climate to justify tropical color. But having now experienced the Bahamas, I have changed my mind. Yes, it is the sun, and the color of the sky. But we have those in Florida and even there it doesn’t feel totally natural. Now I think it is the water. The crystal clear water mixes the color of the sky and color of the bottom to make some of the most bright and beautiful color imaginable. Not just in strips, or spots or under only special conditions. When you are on one of the shallow banks the color is endless, from horizon to horizon, blazing aqua green. The color would look almost artificial could you not stare down into it and see every feature of the bottom tens of feet down. Here the ability to judge the depth of water visually is more useful than your fathometer. Every depth, every bottom feature all produce a different color. Traveling through areas of coral heads requires getting as high on deck as possible and looking down into the water to determine the location and depth of the coral.

Funny, maybe it is partially the sun. Even though it is not overly warm here, particularly when the cold fronts blow through every week, but it still feels like the tropics. The brilliant colors meld together with the bight sun and blue sky to provide a warmth that belies the temperature of the air. So it is in the Bahamas.

We plan to move on south as soon as the weather improves, first to the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, then on to Staniel Cay and Georgetown. We will keep you posted.

Fair winds and good diesel,

Lew and Lyn

s/v Sea Wings