Day 169 - The Spring — Captain Father John

Miles cruised 0, fuel purchased 4 gallons of gasoline for the dingy at $4.13 per gallon = $16.52, the slip fee $150, electricity $52, daily high temperature 78°f

The wind continues to blast out of the east and we have full shelter on the west side of Highbourne Cay. Several mega yachts have been coming and going. Even the 100+ footers are saying it’s rolly on the inside passage. We will stay put for one or two more days and then head south on Thursday or Friday to Shroud Cay or Hawksbill Cay and try to pick up a mooring ball. Winds are forecast to abate starting Thursday night. It won’t be too long before will start looking for a weather window to cross back across the Gulf Stream to Stuart, Florida. We do not want to cross with any winds from the north pushing against the Gulf Stream.

We heard from Steve Saylor of Solstice who picked up a mooring ball at Hawksbill Cay. He advises it was a rock and roll day and night.

I chatted with Steve the Dockmaster while I fueled up the dingy. His family has been in the Bahamas since the slave trade days. His family is in Eluethra which is 26 miles away but he has to go to Nassau to get a ferry to Eluethra. He works six weeks straight and gets one week off to go home. His great grandfather was a British merchant captain delivering pineapples and tomatoes to New York City from the Caribbean. The sea captain married a Bahamian free slave.

The same joker that created the skeleton sitting at the bus stop also created “The Spring.” When we checked into the marina were told that one of the highlights of the island was the spring on the south beach. It is a “must see.” So we hiked up the hill and along the dirt road and down the hill to the beach and then into the underbrush. There are high quality signs pointing the way. When we finally arrived at the site and you can see what we found in the photo.

The bull sharks school around the fish cleaning station where fishermen toss their carcasses from cleaning the fish. This is just around the corner from the swimming beach.

Congratulations to Weber Yachts on the sale of Star Fisher. That is the boat Priscilla and John helped deliver to TrawlerFest from Ft Meyers to Riviera Beach via the Okeechobee Waterway (the ditch).

Bonus photo

Carl (Chef) Wooden – quote of the day.

So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again. – Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf – 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway(1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), with its famous dictum, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, thought to have been what is now termed bipolar disorder, and committed suicide by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.