2022 Letter #3 from the Bahamas by Greg and Barbara Allard
Our sincerest thanks to Greg and Barbara Allard for once again sharing their thoughts and beautiful photography from their Bahamas cruises. These photos and descriptions will have you aching to follow in Meander‘s wake! For more this excellent photography, type Allard in our Homepage search window for letters from previous cruises.
Greg Allard
May 30, 2022, 11:31 AM (2 days ago)
Hello everyone – Here is our third Letter from the Bahamas for 2022.
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustav Flaubert
“In reality, you don’t ever change the hurricane. You just learn how to stay out of its path.”
– Jodi Picoult
We included this photo in our Letter from 2015; it was taken a short while after this fishing boat, Summer Place from Nassau, Bahamas, had been driven aground while trying to run from a hurricane. In normal circumstances, this boat could have been salvaged and put back into service, but the complexity of the project and the estimated costs would have far exceeded its value; it would have been almost impossible (without extraordinary expense) to have the necessary barges and equipment reach the site, because of the shallow water.
The sea is unrelenting. This is a recent photo of the same wreck, showing the effects of seven years of time, tide, gales and hurricanes. There is an upside – a sunken boat such as this slowly becomes a reef, attracting all kinds of small fish and sea life, which in turn attract larger ones. As we circled the wreck, we saw an 8’ shark who had come for dinner.
Kingsley K. Charles – His eyes say it all – windows to his soul.
Every so often you encounter someone who fits the category of “One of the most interesting persons I’ve met.” He is known as “King” and he’s a native of Great Harbour Cay; his parents live here, and they had eight children. Some of his brothers and sisters now live in Nassau, Freeport, and a couple are in the U.S.
He is far from typical. His father, a minister, wanted him to be a lawyer, and he received a scholarship with help from an ex-pat on the island whose company provided it. He attended Liberty University in Virginia for three years, then began working in a bank and eventually for a brokerage company, all in the U.S. While in the U.S. he married and moved to Nashville, but the union did not work. At one point in his life he toured around the world.
He returned to Nassau, and began serious work on the passion of his life which is music. He is an extremely talented and creative musician, who then worked in Nassau for three years in the industry, including the creation of an album, which he has not finished. He was engaged to a Bahamian woman in Nassau, but that broke off.
So many young men and women who grow up on small Bahamian out-islands follow a pattern: when they finish high school (or before), they leave the island and do not return. This is where King differs: after his music work in Nassau, he said that he “Wanted to come home” to Great Harbour Cay. He mentions “home” often; this is his home. This is where he feels most grounded.
He just turned 40, is smart-smart, reads philosophy and has a high level of intellectual curiosity. He is looking for his next path in life, but he is not in a hurry.
Currently he is the Assistant General Manager at the marina on Great Harbour, a job he does extremely well.
And finally, he is a truly nice and good person. It has been a pleasure to know him.
King, performing a number of his own songs at a Friday night bar-b-que event at the marina.
Most of our photos are taken with a Nikon D7000, a superb professional level camera. But our back-up camera is….an Apple iPhone. It has one big advantage over the Nikon – it is light, goes in your pocket (so it’s always with you); plus it takes really good photos in most situations. It also has a panoramic feature: press the button, and start to pan slowly from left to right, standing in one spot and only moving the phone with your hands and arms. This photo shows a 180 degree view. When you are done scanning, the camera seamlessly stitches the whole thing together into one photo.
The mailboat has arrived, the lifeline to the cay. Yes the water is shallow for such a large boat, which is why the captain prefers to arrive and dock at the upper half of the 3’ tide. Sometimes offloading takes too long, the boat starts to sit on the bottom, and it has to power its way back out. There is a mini-van on the midship deck, being transported to some island.
When the boat docks, dozens of trucks and cars descend on the government dock to take away their goods. It is organized bedlam. This pickup truck, heavily loaded with food, is one of the last to leave the dock area.
Few restaurants in the out-islands of the Bahamas look like a major American chain restaurant. This charming but unassuming place is called Brown’s Garden, and the owner Ronnie is the excellent chef. He has no inside tables, just a bar under the blue umbrella, and a table on the other side of the road, from which this picture was taken. Fortunately for the rooster and some nearby chickens there was no poultry on the menu.
Ronnie Brown. He served us some excellent cracked conch, and a delicious salad. Unfortunately we learned that the lease on “this old building” was soon to be up, and he would not be continuing his restaurant. The pandemic was particularly hard on him, as there were almost no visitors to the island, and the economy affected the locals who had less to spend on locally cooked meals.
He intends to return to his prior career in fishing.
One day, at the Beach Club, our waitress Clinique (whom you’ve met in prior Letters) offered for us to taste a dilly. A dilly?? It is a small fruit which grows on trees, and once it is ripe it is delicious. We’ve never had one before. It’s full name is Sapodilla. (We ate it so fast we forgot to take a picture of it, so this is not one of our photos.) You can see a full sized dilly under the open one.
This is Leonard Wright, who has a long and talented career in art. He recounts that while in school he was always drawing things, and was bopped on the head by the teacher more than once for “doodling and drawing” and being distracted from “real learning.” When he was young, he went for six months to a specialized art school in Freeport, on Grand Bahama, which is the only formal art training he received. He has self-taught to work in all media including painting, (oils, acrylic, water), drawing, glass etching and wood carving.
He is 59 years old, and has four children, two boys and two girls named Bernice, Bernette, Bernard and Jeremiah. He has a private pilot’s license. He and his wife are passionate about the need for their children to have an strong education. His oldest daughter just finished law school and is preparing to take the bar exam. Two of his others are in college, one studying construction and engineering, and the other electrical engineering/aerospace. His youngest son is in high school.
He has developed a fine specialty in creative engraving on bottles. His work is superb. A truly creative, well-spoken, talented and engaging man.
A Leonard Wright creation – a beautiful beach scene on a repurposed tequila bottle. My favorite is the hogfish in the lower right. This is only one of the three sides he engraved on this square bottle. After engraving, he uses a white engraving compound to highlight the drawings.
Two of the cruise ship lines have nearby islands they stop at, about five miles away. He and his wife have a small booth there, where he sells his beautiful engraved bottles to the passengers. He can customize existing ones, or create new designs in an hour or two. When they depart, I hope they appreciate that they have left the island with an authentic craft by an extraordinarily talented Bahamian artist.
A nice home, owned by the family that runs a good local restaurant, Coolie Mae’s.
There is still a great deal of poverty on these islands. This house looks better in the photo than it does in real life. Curious how the color of the car matches the building.
One day, while visiting Ruth Adderley-Rolle’s neat little Bahamian shop, this gentleman entered. He’s Chief Sherman, Assistant District Superintendent of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. He is the responsible for all of the Berry Islands, a large area with multiple islands stretching thirty miles from Great Harbour in the north to Chubb Cay in the south. He does so with 5-6 officers. He has been with the RBPF for twenty-five years. He rotates throughout the Bahamas on assignment, and his current one has him in the Berrys for two years. Police Officers here patrol unarmed, and their 4WD Jeep police vehicles don’t have flashing lights – and likely not even a siren. There are no traffic lights here, only a handful of stop signs
A few days later, while at the outdoor Beach Club tiki bar and restaurant, Chief Sherman remembered us, came over to our table and chatted with us for a good while. He was not in uniform, but likely was on-duty. He has an engaging personality and from our observations, has built strong relationships with the people he serves.
The next time you are boating in the U.S. and complain about how the Aids to Navigation (buoys and channel markers) are inadequate or improperly placed, remember this photo of what passes for a channel marker. These are quite common. The problem with this one is that there is shallow water all around it, for some distance. Perhaps it is just a reference point, and the locals know to “go 50 yards to the west.” In some of the larger harbors there are good channel markers, but this one adds local flavor, if not navigational aid.
There are hundreds of these private little beaches.
No words necessary.
Warmest regards,
Greg and Barbara
Copyright Greg Allard, 2022
Final – 5/30/2022
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Comments from Cruisers (2)
I was able to purchase some "repurposed" cruise ship tumblers from Mr. Wright on a couple of trips to Coco Cay. They are beautiful and treasured. My last trip to Coco Cay in 2024, I was told that he is "… no longer around.". I'm not sure what they meant and I thought it would be rude to ask.
Thank you for posting the pictures and wonderful thoughts; good memories.
The photos and the definitive explanations accompanying each of of them of this sojourn through the Berry Islands are non-pareil!
Thanks for your generosity in sharing them!
AVC