Our sincerest thanks to Greg and Barbara Allard for sharing their thoughts and beautiful photography from their Bahamas cruises. These photos and descriptions will have you aching to follow in the Allard’s wake! Stay tuned for more letters in the weeks ahead.

Letter # 1

We left our home dock in Palmetto, Florida in mid February. We’ve owned Meander for five years, and she has served us well.

As we did last year, we are traveling with another boat, Latitude, owned by Jim and Ellen Pope; they are wonderful cruising friends.

On the west coast of Florida on Gasparilla island, we saw this small rowing boat. It doesn’t have quite the comfort of a larger cruising boat, but we imagine that the rower is having just as much fun. We couldn’t tell whether there was a child or a pet under the smaller umbrella.

Lake Okeechobee is a huge lake in the middle of the state. To move our boat from the west coast of Florida to the east coast (before we continue to the Bahamas), we cross Florida by using a series of rivers and man-made canals which connect the lake to each coast, a total journey of 150 miles. The Okeechobee Waterway was created in 1937 for commercial boats, but now is used mostly by recreational vessels.

In this photo Meander is traveling in one of the man-made canals which run along the southern side of the lake.

Ahead of us we spotted this huge fire, which dumped ash on the decks of the boat. Such fires are a regular occurrence in late winter and early spring: they are related to the sugar cane industry. In Florida, the sugar cane is burned just before harvesting to remove dead leaves. The burning does not harm the stalks of cane. From friends in Louisiana, we learned that there is another reason: sugar cane can be harvested yearly (from the same plantings.) However, after five years or so, the plants are exhausted, and they must be burned so that new plantings can be made in the field.

As you might imagine, there is serious pressure on the sugar cane industry to stop such burnings, which deposit soot and ash as far east as Palm Beach. But there are equal pressures based on the economics of the industry. Florida is the second largest producer of sugar cane in the U.S.

Lake Okeechobee is usually 13’ or so above sea level. A series of five locks lift the boats up as they approach the lake, and then lower the boats back down to sea level on the other side.

The locks can be tricky. This is the St. Lucie lock in Stuart, Florida. It has the highest lift or fall (depending on which way you are traveling) of all the locks, at about 12’. As you enter the lock, there are lines hanging down from the sides, and to reach them you have to carefully maneuver the boat towards the hard concrete wall. We have fenders (bumpers) hanging over the sides of the boat to prevent damage. Then one of us has to grab the bow line (at the front of the boat, temporarily tie it off, and then move quickly to the back of the boat to reach for a stern line. At that point each of us is positioned at one of the lines, and we have undone the temporary knots to the cleats.

In this photo, the lockmaster has opened the doors of the lock to lower us down; the rush of water out of the lock is tremendous, and it causes the boat to lurch and tug at its lines. You have to be careful not to actually secure the line to the cleat of the boat, because as the boat falls, you must gradually let out more line. Each of us carries a knife, in case the line gets hung-up; cutting the line is preferable to having the cleats literally ripped off the boat.

We crossed the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas in early April. We passed close to this container ship just off Freeport on Grand Bahama island. The small black boat on the left is the Pilot boat; it will drop off an experienced pilot from the area, who will assist the captain in bringing the boat safely into the harbor.

Approximately 90% of the world’s goods are shipped by sea, and 75% are in “containerized cargo.” Containers are large steel boxes (often transported on land as part of a “tractor-trailer” combination). Their design make it easy to load and unload them from the ship by crane. The containers are stacked quite high on the deck, and are held together with strong (?) connectors.

Why is there a question mark after “strong”? On March 5, 2018, off the coast of North Carolina, a sister-ship to this one, also owned by Maersk Lines, lost between 70 and 73 containers off its deck due to high winds and heavy seas in a bad storm. The simple explanation is that the connectors broke, or had been improperly installed. The U.S. Coast Guard issued an alert: some of the containers sank, but others were floating end-on-end, with as little as one foot sticking out of the water. This situation creates a huge risk. A container floating at or just below the surface would severely damage – or sink – any smaller boats who struck it.

This picturesque boat house (with residence) is at Port Lucaya on Grand Bahama. If there were no palm trees, it would look very much like something that Jay Gatsby would have built on the north shore of Long Island. We may not be the only ones who thought that: take a close look at the name of the boat inside.

We went for dinner on Chub Cay, at the southern end of the Berry Islands, and this man was our waiter. His name tag read, simply, “Remedy.” He is originally from Nassau, but has worked on Chub Cay since 1976. He came to Chub looking for a temporary job as a waiter, and stayed there as a waiter for his career. He is 67 years old. We had a wonderful conversation with him, so good that we forgot to ask him about his name.

In front of the club house at Chub there was a bronze sculpture of a woman holding up a dolphin.
Barbara just couldn’t resist mimicking the pose.

Chub Cay is in an area of the Bahamas which has some excellent fishing. As a result, sport fishing boats congregate there, and in the evening each of them tries to outdo the others with dramatic displays of lights, both above and under water. The mega-yacht at the bottom of the dock, La Sirena, is 43 meters long (141’).

Nature always surprises us.

During one of our open water ocean crossings to the Berry Islands, we saw a huge disturbance in the water ahead of us, which is usually a school of fish.

It is not uncommon to see dolphins as we travel. They are usually in pods of 4-6.
As we got closer we were astonished to see that the disturbance was caused by around 150-200 dolphins! They were in an area about the size of a basketball court. We thought at first that they were feeding on a school of fish, but there were no fish around. They were just traveling together, and playing. There were many small dolphin calves in the group. As we proceeded, the group moved towards us, until it completely surrounded our boat. Dolphins were jumping in the air everywhere, and a large one jumped three feet from the boat, about ten feet into the air. I immediately slowed the boat down, but they are so quick that there is no risk that they will be hit by the boat. I couldn’t get to my camera fast enough to record the initial bedlam, and within a minute or so they started to move along.

The dolphin in this photo ran along side of our boat and made a spectacular leap; at the top right of the photo is a disturbance in the water which was from another group of perhaps six dolphins.

Another photo of our dolphin meeting. Two leaping at the left, two at the surface in the middle, and a third group underwater to the right.

Sometimes the best photos are accidental. This is David, who makes conch salad at Great Harbor Cay. It was not until I looked at this photo later that day that I saw the sign to the right. The sign refers to manatees, but having met David, the cautions could apply equally to his independent spirit.

On our way south to the Exuma islands, we stopped in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. One day we came upon this Bahamian wedding. Very much like any wedding we would have attended in the U.S. except for one thing.
The outfits are so much more colorful.

Just down the street from the wedding, and directly across from Parliament, was this public service sign. It’s playful, in that the Bahamians are making fun of their habit of dropping “th” from many words. So “thing” becomes “ting”.

In Downtown Nassau there is a shop that specializes in white clothing made from Egyptian and Turkish cotton.

These three sales women were just as they appear – warm, Bahamian people; yes, the one on the right was a handful! The one in the middle was named “Peachy” and the woman on the left appeared to be the voice of reason.

We were in Nassau while we waited for some strong winds to lay-down, docked at the Palm Cay marina on the southeast corner of New Providence island, about 10 miles from downtown Nassau.

This sailboat had left the marina a couple of hours earlier, in heavy southeast winds. It was owned by a Canadian, who had just bought it. We are not quite sure how much experience he had, but he wanted to go, so he went.

Somewhere offshore, in heavy seas, his rudder failed, which means that while his engine worked, he could no longer steer the boat. The channel coming back into the marina is narrow, it makes a hard turn left and then an immediate turn right. Three dinghies went out to meet him, and acted as mini tug boats to push his boat back and forth to keep him in the channel, while the 20+ knot winds threw the boat all over. As his boat was corralled into marina there were many close calls, including narrowly avoiding several yachts worth millions of dollars.

His boat was an older one, and with many untried systems it was foolhardy for him to have departed in such conditions.

God protects fools.

The end of the day, and the end of this Letter. We’ll be back again soon.

Warmest regards

Greg and Barbara

Copyright, Greg Allard