Unexcused Absences

December 30, 2015 – January 10, 2016. After spending the holidays at home and playing golf three days in a row starting Christmas Eve (Virginia was really warm in December), we flew back to Grand Bahama December 30 (New Years Eve Eve) with the idea of spending the next five months cruising the islands onboard our 40-year-old trawler, Miss Adventure.

The boat looked pretty good after three weeks in Charlton Knowles’ care; at our request his crew had sanded our teak rub-rail to get rid of the peeling white paint, and he had also stripped the salon doors and replaced the rotten center panels and given the doors several coats of varnish. We spent a few days sorting, provisioning, working on boat projects, and getting ready for our real cruise to start. The biggest project was to replace the spare oil cooler I had installed in December with the brand new one I had purchased in the States and brought with me in my luggage. I also replaced the port engine oil pressure switch, since it had never worked correctly from the beginning.

“Miss Adventure” at Knowles Marine

One highlight of our time on Grand Bahama was going into town at sunset on January 1. The big Junkanoo festival was scheduled for that night, and we were curious what all the fuss was about. Junkanoo is the Bahamian version of Carnival, and teams spend all year building their costumes and floats for the big musical parade. We found a spot next to the VIP seating area and settled in to watch with a family of three generations of Bahamian women.

Grand Bahama Junkanoo costume

Neptune?

Junkanoo

The costumes were truly amazing with their complexity and attention to detail, but the overall atmosphere was a bit too contrived. It was fun to see, but definitely not worth making a special trip from the USA. The local food vendors were one of the highlights of the evening – the deal of the century was one local family making conch fritters for $0.25 each. Unfortunately their operation was an efficiency expert’s nightmare, but we eventually got served and the fritters were delicious.

One day, after yet more boat projects, I suggested we take the dinghy out the inlet and go for a swim. On the way back, Heather noticed conch tracks in the sand in the middle of the channel. Without delay (and without even a snorkel mask) she jumped overboard and swam down 10 feet and came up with an enormous conch. We had just started up again when we saw more conch tracks, so she dove again and again came up with a second big conch. This is one of the reasons I love my wife. Now we had dinner, and all we had to do was figure out how to get the little critters out of their shell.

Heather successfully dives for a conch

I have witnessed the conch-extraction process several times, and have even prepared my own conch salad (although from frozen and already extracted conch), so I was eager to try it out. I took a medium-sized chisel and hammer and went to work on the shell. The trick is to make a small incision between the second and third rows of spikes on the shell. It looks so easy when the locals do it. I positioned the chisel and made a few tentative taps with the hammer, and when nothing happened I hit harder. Still nothing. I hit even harder, and still nothing. By now I was actually deforming the chisel tip, as hard as that is to believe. Granted, it was not an expensive chisel to begin with, but really?

The cute conch “face”

Insert the filet knife…

… and extract the conch

Then cut off anything that isn’t white

A few more hard whacks and finally the shell started to chip away. By the time I got the hole big enough for our filet knife I (or rather, the conch shell) had done quite a number on my poor chisel. Memo to self: Find a local conch expert and figure out how to gracefully cut the required slit in the shell. Now it was a simple matter of sliding the knife in, twisting it in just the right way, and the little critter would slide right out. At least that’s what I’ve seen previously. So I reached in with the knife, sliced around a bit, maybe (or maybe not) severing the area where the conch attaches to his shell. Now I just reached in and pulled him out.

More slicing

Ha ha, just kidding. The poor little guy had, after all the banging and slicing and chopping, retracted himself deep into the shell. With much struggle and a bit of cursing I was finally able to grab his little cartilage “foot” and with extreme effort extract him from the shell. Finally. The locals make it look so easy. Now I was on familiar territory, and after a few minutes of slicing and dicing had removed all the naughty bits and was left with a hand-sized lump of fresh, white conch meat.

Soon to be minced into conch salad

Similar efforts on shell number two yielded a total of probably 10 ounces of meat, which we quickly made into conch salad and ate for dinner. There was enough salad left over to try out a conch fritter recipe, and Heather fried up the most amazing fritters the next day for lunch. It’s not often in the 21st century that one can hunt (although maybe “gather” is the more appropriate term for a conch), kill, prepare, and eat a meal from start to finish, and it was satisfying to go through the whole process.

Conch fritters!

By Thursday January 7 all our preparations were complete. We took the boat for a short cruise over to Port Lucaya harbor and anchored in front of the Flying Fish, the #1 restaurant in all the Bahamas. Heather’s dad and his wife had given us a gift certificate for Christmas, so we celebrated our soon-to-start cruise with dinner at this amazing restaurant. The superlative reviews we had read were completely justified; the portions were perfect, the flavors were subtle and delicious, and the owners were very much engaged in making sure we had a terrific evening. Thank you Dave and Cynthia! It was truly one of our top five meals ever.

Delicious dinner at the Flying Fish

Friday morning January 8 dawned clear and relatively calm, perfect conditions for the ~50 mile crossing to the Berry Islands. We hauled in our anchor at daybreak (about 6:30am) and aimed for a spot over the horizon to the south-east. About an hour into the cruise I noticed the starboard coolant temperature was a bit high, so I went below to investigate. When I entered the salon I noticed several things all at once. The temperature was indeed a bit high (190 degrees instead of 180), the engine sounded louder and rougher, and most alarmingly, the water sensor I had installed under the prop shaft coupling was sounding its alarm. Hmmm, this was puzzling.

Seawater was pouring out this hole

I opened the aft access door to the engine room, turned on the light, and was greeted with a small gusher of water coming out a three inch hole at the back of the engine. Now I’m no expert in marine diesel engines, but I’m pretty sure that this was not within the normal operating specifications. I ran back to the salon to shut off the starboard engine, then took a closer look at the problem. The round plate that seals the back of the raw water heat exchange unit had fallen completely off and was lying next to the engine. Probably prudent to turn around and head back to Knowles Marine. I’m getting pretty good at driving and docking Miss Adventure with only one engine – I’ve certainly had quite a bit of practice recently.

The engine room, where I spend a shocking amount of time

Later that morning Charlton and I made the repair; while he drilled out the old screw body (the head that held the plate had corroded off), I scavenged some brass bolts from my spare parts collection, sanded a decade of accumulated gradu (the previous owner’s favorite word to describe the grime that builds up on stuff in the engine room) off the plate, made a new gasket using the sheets of rubber in my spare parts collection, and then we put everything back together.

Final sunset on Grand Bahama

The next day we started our departure process all over again. We needed to leave Grand Bahama early because of the 7+ hour cruise ahead of us, but the entrance channel to Knowles Marine is not passable at low tide, which was early morning, so we waited until after lunch and then cruised 1.5 hours east along the southern coast to the Grand Lucayan Waterway, pulled in, turned left, and dropped anchor in Topgallant Basin (an abandoned manmade basin for an unbuilt marina), opposite an abandoned condo, in the middle of an abandoned luxury real estate development. This massive network of roads and canals was built 50 years ago and under different circumstances would have been an amazing luxury development just 90 miles from south Florida, but now it’s just a weed-covered monument to what a corrupt local government can do to kill off innovation, investment, and economic development.

One of many abandoned projects in Grand Bahama

Hopefully the weather tomorrow will be calm for our crossing to the Berry Islands and we can get our out-island cruise underway.

Bahamas Cruise 2016 – Grand Bahama

Bahamas 2016 Cruise – Grand Bahama

• Engine Hours: 5
• Generator Hours: 1
• Miles Traveled: 29
• Marina Fees: $750*

Bahamas 2016 Cruise – Total Numbers

• Engine Hours: 5
• Generator Hours: 1
• Miles Traveled: 29
• Marina Fees: $750

* The $750 marina fee was for a full month of parking at Knowles Marine including water and electricity