Cat Island and More

“Ann, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” As I looked off our starboard bow, I could not see the horizon – a wave about fifteen feet high and about 200 meters distant was moving away from us. As I looked abaft our starboard beam there was another fifteen foot wave, this one heading for us. We were in the trough formed by two fifteen footers as they gently lifted us up and softly set us back down. It was like this for about an hour. Up, up, up and up … then down, down, down and down. When we were at the top of the wave, aft and to starboard we could see rows upon rows of waves heading for us; if we looked forward and to port there was wave after wave receding from us. It wasn’t really scary as much as it was awe-inspiring. There was really nothing of which to be afraid and there was certainly nothing either of us could do even if we were. We could just imagine the power of each of those waves, and imagine the power of the storm that produced them sending them hundreds of miles towards us. We felt like a little cork bobbing up and down in a big pond.

That was the story of our crossing between Little San Salvador and Cat Island. Yes, we knew what to expect – in a way. We had read the forecast that the remnants of Winter Storm Riley were going to produce some big waves with a long period in between, but we had never been in seas like that. We are usually more concerned with the chop on the waves rather than the waves themselves. Everything we read and everyone to whom we talked told us not to worry. And though they tried to describe the feeling of a little boat in a big ocean, they couldn’t quite convey the feeling. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but it is one of those events in life that you don’t understand until you have been there. By the way, Spot wasn’t impressed.

Again, I am far ahead of myself. The crossing from Cat to Eleuthera  came several days into this particular adventure, so let me catch you up.

Black Point

You may recall that we left you when we were at Big Major Spot near Staniel Cay. We wanted to move on and the next sensible anchorage in the chain was Black Point. There are four reasons cruisers go to Black Point. First, it is protected from the east. True, Big Major Spot (our previous anchorage) probably provides a little better protection under most wind conditions, but Big Major does not have the second reason people stop at Black Point: Mama’s delicious, home-made bread. If I can digress a minute, almost every country has its own cuisine. Italy. France. Portugal. Spain. Mexico. England; okay, maybe not England, but you get my drift. The Bahamas has only two claims to fame in its cuisine – conch (pronounced konk) and bread.  And Mama is the consummate bread maker. You can order your bread over the radio, of course, but the best way is to go to Mama’s house, open the door, go into the kitchen and tell her what you want. If she is not there, just wait until she returns.

The third reason people go to Black Point is the laundry. Ida (last name unknown) has turned her launderette into a serious money making operation. She has at least 12 washers and an equal number of driers – and on any given day, most of them are busy most of the time. What do you do while you are waiting? Ida can cut your hair, you can use her wi-fi or you can avail yourself of the book exchange or her little store. Ida has it all.

The fourth reason people go to Black Point is the restaurants. Right now, there are three of them that cruiser’s frequent (there will, I hear, soon be a fourth, but it is further out of town and may not make it as well as the big three). These restaurants aren’t fine dining. This is, after all, the Bahamas , but the food is pretty good – and did I mention that they have their own happy hours? I mention Happy Hour because it was at Scorpio’s Happy Hour on Friday evening that we had arranged to meet our friends Vic and Gigi, owners of the boat Salty Turtle. We saw them last in Black Point about a year ago and picked up our conversation exactly where it left off. I am thinking we’ll probably see them about a year from now and I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t in Black Point at Scorpio’s Happy Hour.

We only stayed in Black Point a couple of days (how long does it take to do laundry, eat lunch, go to happy hour and order a couple of loaves of Mama’s bread?). On Monday morning we decide that the weather had broken sufficiently that we could make it to George Town, so off we went. That was a mistake. Here I am going to turn over the narration to our security officer and Chief Spokes-cat, Spot.

Spot’s Narrative: You know, I just don’t understand humans. Here we are in a beautiful anchorage. The boat rolls gently side-to-side, the breeze ripples the waters, I can watch fish gliding under the boat and observe the birds as they soar above – and not least, of course, the humans leave the boat periodically so I can get some rest from being petted all the time.  This, you have to understand is like paradise to a cat; it is idyllic. Then THEY decide that we have to go somewhere else.

Now I don’t mind an occasional boat ride. Traipsing down the ICW where the waves are a few inches to maybe a foot (on bad days) is my idea if a nice boat outing. But these guys take me out into the North freakin’ Atlantic Ocean. And they pick days when those tsunami’s – as we call them in Catland – are breaking over the bow of the boat getting salt over everything and shaking me to hell and back. Do I get upset? You better believe it! Do I run and hide? You darn tootin’. 

Spot in her "other" favorite hiding place.
In a pillow fort on the sofa.

Do I sit on my blanket on the helm chair between members of my staff? Of course I do. Who else is going to get this dad gum boat back to a nice calm anchorage if they both fall out the door? Would I push them out? Of course not … well, probably not … well, not as long as they don’t take us back into the freakin’ ocean!

As you can see, Spot is – shall we say – not a fan of ocean raveling. At any rate, after we left Black Point, it didn’t take long for us to figure out that the waves were not only too much for Spot, they were too much for us as well, so we headed in the next Cut, back to the relative safety and comfort of the Exuma Banks. As soon as we entered Little Farmer’s Cut, the waves decreased, we weren’t shaking as much, Spot was meowing again and all was right with the world.

While at Farmer’s I noticed that my batteries weren’t behaving exactly as I thought they should, so we decided to head for Emerald Bay Marina, put a max charge on them, let Spot rest for a night and catch our breaths. (I don’t know of anything is wrong with the batteries. I am going to wait a couple of days until we get out of our current marina and check them again. Don’t worry, I’ll keep everyone posted.)

On the way to Emerald Bay I heard the now familiar whir. (Note, there is no capital “W,” no exclamation mark, and only one “r” in this whir. I tell you that so you don’t get your expectations raised.) The one good thing about this bite was that I actually SAW the fish take the lure. We were trolling, I needed a break from the helm so I stepped back to watch the lure in the water. Bam, he took it. I wish I could say he jumped several feet into the air as he gulped the lure down, but I just got a glimpse of color as he took it. It was kind of anticlimactic. Anyway, about thirty to forty seconds later, I felt the line go slack. My leader had broken. (For non-fisherpeople, the leader is a line that connects the lure to the fishing line itself. It usually is much stronger that the monofilament line from the reel. This leader was 100# test. Go figure.) Now, I readily admit that I am not a great fisherman, and I lose my share of fish due to a combination of inexperience and ineptitude. It is when the dad gum manufacturers let me down that I get really upset. Ok, for any of you doubters, I kept the broken leader and I am prepared to show it to anyone. Hmm, I just had a thought. I wonder if I could return it to West Marine for a refund. I’m gonna find out.

Ok, one more fish story. While “fighting” the Mahi, I saw in the distance a school of black fin tuna jumping out of the water and having a great time. Well, we turned the boat around and ran through the school hoping one of them was hungry. Nothing. Then we ran through the school one more time and do you know what? We hooked one. We lost him too. When we got him up to the transom, Ann and I were not very coordinated on lifting him up because we hadn’t been able to practice very much this year, and he got away. I know. I am 0 -3 this year and only have a few more chances to catch anything. Luckily, our neighbor in Cat Island was a serious fisherman. He not only gave me some pointers, but also gave me a couple of lures – one for wahoo and one for tuna. We’ll see!

In George Town, we finally linked up with our good friends, Russ and Lori. They had been in George Town for a month and caught us up on the local goings-on. As you probably know, the anchorage at George Town is kind of “Cruiser Central” in the Bahamas. Everybody comes down to re-provision, meet friends and participate in the regatta. This year’s count of ~250 boats, however, was far less that the 300 or so that were at anchor this time last year. We are not big fans of George Town, but we do like meeting our friends and we did need to re-provision. Our initial intention was to stay for a week or so,  but the more we looked at the weather – and the time available – we decided that, if we really wanted to get to Cat Island, we were going to have to cut our time in George Town short and get moving.

While we were there, though, we had a good time. Russ and Lori took us on a dinghy tour, showing us the area where they, in their shallow draft catamaran, generally anchor when bad weather comes.  We also tried to go to lunch. Yes, I said “tried.” Some of you know, and others may have even been, to “Chat and Chill,” the local hangout. Everyone goes to Chat and Chill. The four of us went for a little lunch after the dinghy tour. Ann and I ordered a beer each and were going to split an order of French Fries. The way it works at Chat and Chill is that you place your order, get your beer and wait for them to tell you when your food is ready. I know. You’re thinking, “well, that’s not so unusual, that’s the way it works at our local MacDonalds.” I’m sorry, but fast food the Chat and Chill ain’t. It is not unusual to wait a half-hour or forty-five minutes for even a small order. But at the end of an hour, Ann went to check on our order. Don’t worry, they said, it is coming. Ok, we thought, that’s the Bahamas; we were having a good time with Russ and Lori regardless. Thirty minutes later, however, she checked again. Oh! They forgot to tell us the fryer was down. The fryer was down. How did they think they were going to cook French fries? We learned once again that there is the American way, the Bahamian way and somewhere down at the line is the Chat and Chill way.

  Cat Island

Father Jerome's Hermitage

Our main new adventure this year was to visit Cat Island. It is an island about 3 miles wide and 48 miles long in the eastern central Bahamas. It was named after Arthur Catt, a pirate who is identified as an “associate” of Blackbeard. Apparently, he visited the island frequently and hid his booty there. In fact, the island’s major town is named Arthur’s Town after, you guessed it, Captain Catt. I have tried to look up Catt on line and can’t find our very much about him. Maybe he was more successful than his more famous, but headless, friend, Blackbeard.

The beach at Hawk's Nest Marina. Hey, someone
has to do it!

For nearly four centuries, Cat was called “San Salvador,” because most people thought that it was the island where Columbus first landed and because Columbus called the island where he landed San Salvador. However, after what I imagine was a number of academic conferences, a lot of research and – at least one elderly islander believes – an exchange of money, “Cat” was changed to Cat and the former Watling’s Island was changed to San Salvador. All of this happened in 1926. Few serious scholars today think that Cat was the spot of the First Landing; by the same token, few serious scholars before the twentieth century thought that Cat WASN’T the site of the First Landing.



We stayed at the Hawk’s Nest Marina near the southern tip of the island. The marina itself is somewhat rustic, with older, but fully functional fixed docks. Nevertheless, it has all the services cruisers need and more. There is an excellent (and cheap) laundry, very clean showers and restrooms, a nice beach and a wonderful captain’s lounge with pool, ping pong table and darts. About ¼ mile away (reachable by one of the resort’s free bicycles) is the rest of the resort with another beach, a good restaurant, a nice pool and an “honor bar.” The marina is really designed for serious sports fishermen, who spend most of their time fishing for billfish. Our neighbors at the marina were Joanne and John aboard their sports fisher boat, Argo. John gave me several fishing tips and even a couple of lures for tuna and wahoo. No, I have not caught anything with them yet.

The view from atop Mt. Alvernia.
Damn that Cell Tower!

While there, we rented a car and drove almost the entire length of the island, so we can attest that only about 2/3 of it is reachable by paved road – and some of that isn’t paved very well. There are “pot craters” along the entire length of the road, especially in the south where we are.  Driving on Cat is a unique driving experience. Anyway, we visited several sites while in the car. First and foremost we visited The Hermitage on Mt. Alvernia. Mt. Alvernia, at 206 feet, is the highest spot in the Bahamas and from there you can see for miles and miles and miles. Those of us who cannot walk very well (moi) were able to make it up the hill because you have to “lean into it’” as my Dad used to tell me. And I can walk leaning forward very well; it is just the upright walking that causes a problem. Anyway, the view from the mount is stunning and if it weren’t for the BTC cell tower in the middle of the view just might be the prettiest spot in the Bahamas.

What is special about Mt. Alvernia is that Monsignor John Hawes, known to Cat Islanders and Bahamians in general as Father Jerome, built The Hermitage on its peak in 1939. Father Jerome was well now as a skilled architect and sculptor and was responsible for designing and building cathedrals and convents throughout the Bahamas. Using local stone he built The Hermitage, a small medieval-looking monastery, where he could get away from the world.

The Blue Hole Near Orange Creek. We were on the
lookout for the Monster that Devours Horses.

We also visited what seems to be called, “the Big Blue Hole near Orange Creek.” This particular blue hole is said, by locals, to house a monster that devours horses. According to one website, “This folklore still scares local fisherman from venturing too far in this freshwater lake.” (Actually, the lake isn’t fresh, it is kind of brackish.) There are a number of other superstitions around Cat Island. There is another blue hole, for example, in the southern part of the island that supposedly houses a Mermaid. And then there are the locals who still practice a type of voodoo know as Obeah. It came with the first African slaves that worked the island in the nineteenth century. Voodoo charms are still used to protect orchards from thieves and can be seen atop homes to ward off evil spirits. Moreover, the island is speckled with ruins of slaves’ quarters. Apparently, it is smart to keep the spirits of your ancient relatives around you – for luck.

One of the many ruins of slave quarters.

On our trip to the blue hole near Orange Creek we also visited a cave. I walked in the entrance and saw that it went back at least a hundred feet. I couldn’t see much more because I wasn’t smart enough to bring a flashlight with me. Oh well. And finally, we visited the “Fish Fry.” I am not sure what the name means or where it came from, but there were maybe a dozen shacks that served various forms of Bahamian and American food. We went to one and split an order of cracked conch – which was too tough – and a Kalik beer, which was delicious.

We also hung around the resort a little and schmoozed with other guests. We wanted to stay longer and to anchor at New Bight for a while, but we took a look at the weather and decided that we would, instead, head for Rock Sound in Eleuthera. We had been there before and really liked it. Once we got to Rock Sound, however, we saw a weather window that would allow us to cross the Northeast Providence Channel in a couple of days. If we missed this window, it could be over a week before we saw another. Since we have friends coming to Marsh Harbor in the Abacos, we decided we would move out of Rock Sound and up to Royal Island and take the opportunity to get to Marsh. So after waiting out the wind in Rock Sound, we headed north to spend a night at Royal Island in anticipation of leaving the next day.