The Sea Wants Everything Back-- blog post by Captain Trav
4/01/2017Swimming in a cave in near Little Farmer's Cay See my face? This is the euphoric face of a cave junkie. I love caves, but SWI...
4/01/2017
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| Swimming in a cave in near Little Farmer's Cay |
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| See my face? This is the euphoric face of a cave junkie. I love caves, but SWIMMING in one? This was one of my favorite experiences, ever. |
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| This is Hud snorkeling through a sunken plane off Norman's Cay. The plane was enormous, and eerie as hell. The island had been an infamous locale for drug runners, and Trav pointed out that except for the pilot's chair, all the seats had been removed. |
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| This shot better shows the fuselage. It was really spooky! |
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| Hud the spear fisherman. |
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| Viv sews up the hole in her beloved monkey. |
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| Petting sea turtles on Little Farmer's Cay. This is our friend, Kimball, who we met our first day there. |
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| Trav took this awesome sea turtle shot. |
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| At Little Farmer's Cay |
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| Getting ready to dive into Thunderball Grotto, made famous by the James Bond movie. You dive through tunnels to enter and exit, and it opens up into a huge open "room" inside the rock. |
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| One of the entrance tunnels into the grotto |
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| Moog was scared at first, but she swam through the tunnels, holding onto Trav's back. We were really proud of her. |
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| Petting nurse sharks at Staniel Cay |
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| At Bahamas Land and Sea National Park |
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| One of the famous swimming pigs of the Exumas |
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| Moog tentatively feeds the pigs. They are pretty tame, but big and pushy. |
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| Atop "Boo Boo Hill", Warderick Wells, Exumas |
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| Thanks to our great new friends, the Mills family of Rhode Island, Hud has learned to wakeboard. He's obsessed! |
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| Viv collects ton of stuff on every beach and she wants to keep it all. This was her reaction when we told her she couldn't keep this pile of shells and fan coral. It was an epic meltdown. |
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| Comforting the distraught shell collector |
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| Making friends at Black Point Settlement. |
The sea wants everything back, and I am consistently reminded of that fact every day. I think the moment one lets that fact slip from the forefront of their seafaring consciousness, they are goners.
Allow me to explain my theory (which I have had plenty of
time to mull over, you always have time on a boat to think). Let’s head back to Mr. Stewart’s 10th
grade biology class (feel free to substitute your high school teacher, if it
adds to your visualization). For the
most part during my biology days, I kept my head down to avoid direct teacher-student
eye contact with the occasional eyes down nodding of approval when one of my
more studious comrades would make some scientific statement that provided proof
that they had done the assigned reading that I of course had not. My goal was to avoid at all cost the nightly
required hours of assigned reading and at the same time fool all that had into
thinking I had taken on my fair share of reading torture (the exact functions of
mitochondria is reading torture). Learning something was completely
secondary. At some point, during one of
Mr. Stewart’s lectures, we discussed evolution. He discussed that all life on
the planet started in the sea and on one special day some sort of slimy form of
sea life grew some legs and in the quest to find a less confining existence
crawled out of the sea to start anew.
The Sea, like any egocentric entity that was the womb of life for the
planet was pissed off, for it had created life and was not entirely pleased
with sharing it with the other side.
Think of that 80’s duet song by Human League “Girl
don’t you want me? You know I can’t believe it when you tell me that you don’t
need me” The gist is the guy
starts dating the girl when she is waitressing in some club and now he believes
that she owes him some sort of eternal debt, even going so far as to take up most
of the song questioning her leaving…I always wanted to hear more from her. What was her take? I am guessing he was an
asshole. Anyway, that guy never got over
the girl leaving and I think the ocean kind of feels like that “Hey, I gave you
life but I know you don’t respect me so I am going to take you back”. The sea is a little more persistent then the
dude from the song.
The sea applies three distinct tactics in its quest for
returning all things wrongfully taken from its womb. First: It straight up sucks everything down
into it, stop treading water and you will soon get the picture. Yes, even balsa wood will sink once it is
tired enough to stop treading water.
Second tactic is a more Chinese water torture-esque corrosion. Everything
near or on it is constantly being eaten.
All the “stainless steel” on my boat would be gone in a month if I
stopped rubbing off the sea and applying wax to ward off the assault (Yeah I know,
wax is the best I can do to defend my property from the big angry sea…good
luck, right?) Just look at any piece of
heavy machinery that operates within a hundred miles from the Caribbean and you
will see that rust makes up a majority of its being. The people operating it don’t even seem to
put up a fight, it will all rust out in three years so why fight it?
By the way, all of these components have a compounding
effect in that they all create a need for the most expensive and complex equipment
and tools to fight off the inevitable.
Anything that is stamped with the label “Marine grade” cost five times
as much as its land-based cousin and any job takes five times as long on a boat
as it would on land. I call this the
rule of fives. The rule of five is a less direct attempt the sea uses to square
all (eventually financial ruin overtakes and the said item is deposited in the
sea when the owner gives up the fight and lets it rot into the sea ). And finally, the last tactic the sea employs is
brute force and power, and this last one is the inspiration of this blog
post. The sea, given the chance, will bludgeon
anything to smithereens and return it to its bosom. We are presently in the Exumas. The Exumas are a long, idyllic sand clad sub
tropic island chain that runs north to south and separates the Great Exuma Bank
and the open ocean Atlantic (the Atlantic is a bit more foul-mouthed and spiteful
with its constant swells and trade winds that will shake the puke out of the
toughest of individuals). Sometimes
when the Bank side meets with the Atlantic it gets nasty.
So we were anchored off Little Farmers Cay and after five
days it was time to move on. In order to
move further south we need to head out to the Atlantic side as the shallow
depths of the Great Bahama Bank prevented us from traveling south in the lee of
the Exumas. Throughout the Exumas there
are breaks large enough to safely allow a vessel to pass from one side to the
other. I checked the chart prior to
voyaging out and noticed that it made no mention of tidal passage
conditions. I had been warned by my much
wiser sailing friend, Green, that waves can build on an ebbing tide (when the
tide drops and the Bank drains back into the Sound, the Atlantic/Sound beats
the piss out of the sea for leaving in the first place…my best guess). The chart book mentions that at all the cuts
south of Farmers Cut “Current Rips on Ebb”.
It makes no mention of “Rips” on the Farmer’s Cut description. So I wrongfully assumed that we could pass at
any time on the tide schedule. Well, its
one of those things that once you start there’s no turning back. We flew through the cut in what I believe was
the record time of the day. We shot
directly down the center of the “Rips” for about a half mile. The boat was bucking up and down in a manner
more fitting for white water raft than a 43’ sailboat. Below deck we could hear all of our stuff
banging around, including our kids. We
yelled to the kids to hold on and stay in their beds. I focused on keeping the boat headed straight
out to channel and into the waves. Several
times, as we descended a big wave the bow would submarine into the next and the
bow would dive completely under water only to blast out moments later. The deck received a thorough washing. I avoided thoughts of, “What if the generally reliable engine decides
to eat crap now?” I avoided those thoughts by smiling. A whole lot of smiling later, we steered out
of the roller coaster and into the quieter ocean. Jen turned to me and calmly said, “That was
invigorating!” (This from the lady who wakes up in the middle of the night when
the anchor chain gently rubs against the hull and asks in a panic “WHAT WAS
THAT???”) The rest of the sail south,
we tried to avoid the cuts by veering off shore a few miles, but we still were
not able to fully avoid the “Rips”. I think I might send the author of the charts
a note suggests changing “Rips” to “Big Ass Steep Scary Ass Confused Rapids
That Range From 8 to 12 Feet That Come At You In All Directions”.
The lessons keep coming at me and I keep learning them the
hard way. Its all fun, as long as the
Ocean keeps letting us slide by. As I
say, I guess its wanting a little more respect.
And I keep obliging.
