Wonder Woman

Sunday, May 11, 2003 (Mother’s Day)

Friday morning, we left Bell Island for another short run. The sun was just beginning its slow rise from the horizon, and again the fifteen knot east to southeast wind blew in our faces. We rode out past the sand bores into the Bank, then perpendicular to the now-familiar long pale fingers, then turned to port to approach Staniel Cay. Staniel is fast becoming a popular cruising destination for those who find Georgetown, further south, a bit too crowded.

The harbor is formed by the cut between Staniel and the uninhabited Big Majors Cays. Although there are a number of good anchorages nestled within the Big Majors, we opted to set our hook right in the harbor, close to town, and a very easy dinghy ride to the Thunderball Grotto, made famous when James Bond’s Thunderball was filmed here in 1964. It’s an underwater cave that you can snorkel, and this activity is on our list of “things to do at Staniard Cay."

For two people who wanted to avoid the hussle of Nassau and see the backcountry and small towns of the Bahamas, we were elated to be back to civilization. We could dump trash, wash clothes, buy groceries, and have a drink in a bar. Our two-year-old cruising guide indicated that Club Thunderball had coin-operated washing machines.

I held the VHF mike to my mouth. “Club Thunderball, Club Thumberball, Clug Thunderball. This is the Ella McQuaid. Do ya copy?”

A staticy voice responded, “Thunderball.”

I asked about the laundry, but like the dump at Norman’s, it was no longer available.

“Dey all be broken,” she said of the washers and dryers, “But da lady at da Blue Store, she do yo’ washin’ fo ten dolla’ a bag.”

Laundry or no laundry, our first stop was Club Thunderball. After all, you must keep your priorities straight, and ours was a cold drink and some conch fritters. The restaurant sat high on the hill on the east end of the island. We parked our dinghy at a well-maintained wharf, just as a twenty-footer arrived and the happy fishermen began tossing mahi mahi onto the dock.

“Look at all of the fish they caught,” I said. “How come their catching fish and we’re not?” Wayne ignored me.

We clambered up a steep path bordered by small palms and flowering shrubs, adding texture and splashes or yellow and red to an otherwise stark landscape. Two skinny cats greeted us on the steps to the club. Next to the door was a primitive mural featuring toothy natives, buxom women, and salty sailors who all looked like they were having too much fun.

Inside, we were the only patrons in a large room with a horseshoe shaped bar to our left, a few tables and booths next to it, a pair of pool tables in the center, and to our right, rows of rectangular tables lined up end to end. There were more screened windows then walls. The walls were covered with pictures—some of the Thunderball movie crew, some of Jimmy Buffet and a local drummer jamming at the club. There were works by a popular Bahamian artist named Blackman, and a collage of prints celebrating local sailors who’d won the Long Island Regatta in 1995. (This Long Island is in the Bahamas, not New York).

The barmaid, as wide as she was tall, looked up from her work when we pulled up stools and greeted her, then looked back down. Finally, she hobbled over to take our order. Wayne had a Kalik, and I had the house specialty—a Thunderball Smash, made up of a variety of fruit juices, and three, count them, one… two… three… types of rum. She told us about the Friday Night Barbecue, reservations required, not uncommon in the Bahamas. Many restaurants need a headcount for the evening meal.

To get to town from Thunderball, we could’ve walked down a long and dusty road carrying garbage bags, however, we opted to dinghy around to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club for trash disposal.

“I only paid for two bags,” Wayne snickered, as he carried three bags off to the dumpster.

I just shook my head. I’m long past chastising him when he has a moral lapse. It doesn’t do any good, and I think they occur less frequently now, because I fail to react. I knew when I married a “bad boy” that I shouldn’t expect him to miraculously turn into an exemplary citizen. Nor would I want him to.

Back in the dinghy, we motored past the yacht club’s picturesque rental cottages, one yellow, own bright green, one pink, one blue, one orange. They were small and shingled and stood on stilts. They hugged the left side of a small cove. The last cottage sat at the start of the public beach, actually two beaches shaded by casurina trees. The two were separated by a large arc of concrete wall, once painted brightly with the words “Welcome to Staniel Cay,” but faded now by sun and sea. We pulled the dinghy ashore, and walked up the narrow beach to a cracked and potted macadam road. There we saw a couple with plastic bags hanging from their pockets and belts.

“What are you doing?” Wayne asked.

They told us they were collecting lizards and pointed out the varieties they’d captured. The differences were too subtle for my untrained eye, except for the ones whose tail rolled up into a perfectly-shaped curlicue.

“Good protection from cats,” I said, thinking of all the de-tailed lizards we’d left in our trail.

A sign directed us to the right on a road that spiraled up a hill to the stores. We passed small stucco houses, painted in pastels. The yards were landscaped, but dusty. Bougainvillia draped over limestone walls, marking each homestead. There were no cars, an occasional golf cart. The whole town was only three blocks long by three blocks wide, but we still stopped and asked directions from a young man who was single-handedly building a house.

At the top of the hill we found The Blue Store. It was painted royal blue and stood next to the Pink Store that was painted (Can you guess?) hot pink. Both stores were owned by people named Smith, and I wondered if some family feud accounted for the competition, or was everyone in Staniel named Smith.

Inside, the stores looked like many others in the Bahamas, large white refrigerators sparsely filled with wilted produce and softened chunks of cheese, a chest filled with freezer-burned meat and another crammed with misshapen loaves of bread and quarts of milk. Canned goods were limited with only a can or two of each product. You were likely to find the canned peaches tucked in between the Drano and the tuna fish.

After we made our purchases and inquiries, we wound our way back down the quiet lanes past the rainbow-colored cottages to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club for another cold one. If the term “Yacht Club” brings to mind gleaming white motor yachts, and men in double-breasted blazers, think again. This one looks like any small marina with a neighborhood bar and restaurant like so many found on rivers and creeks in the states. A crowd gathered around visiting fishermen who cleaned their day’s catch, while others sat under the shade of a wooden veranda, gulping beer and laughing boisterously. Inside the screened restaurant and bar, we found round tile-covered tables with big chairs made out barrels, painted turquoise. Down a step, lined-up tables, just like at the Thunderball. They were covered with white linens. Sparkling glasses were turned upside down, next to stoneware plates, neatly set for a 7:30 seating where patrons would share them.

We sat at the bar and chatted with an American couple who owned a house on the island. They came for a month at a time, about three times a year.

There are two types of vacationers, I thought as I sipped my beer. One type finds a place they like and they keep going back. These are the people who buy timeshares or condos at the beach, or cabins on a lake or in the mountains. Their RV never moves once they get it to their favorite KOA. The other type of vacationer travels the seas by boat, or the highways, or sky. The means does not matter. What matters is that they’re always seeing something new.

When we used to take long weekend fishing trips, I’d get out our map and find a place on the water, away from a city, a place where we’d never been and that’s where we’d go. That was always fun. This trip, however, is an eternal weekend. What we’re doing is exciting, but sometimes I miss the familiarity of a place.

After a nap, we headed back to Club Thunderball for the barbecue. The place was packed with people. They stood in small groups sipping cocktails. A new friend would arrive and they’d greet him loudly, opening their circles just wide enough to let one more person in. It felt like we were crashing a private party. We saw the couple we met at the bar. They nodded, then slid into a booth with their friends.

A white sheet that was hanging over a pass-through to the kitchen was removed, and the crowd lined up to get heaping plates of ribs, chicken, peas and rice, corn on the cob, and cole slaw. The cook made grouper fingers for Wayne. The tables were filling up and we found our way to the nearly empty “outcast” table, where we dined and talked with a father and son team who were cruising the Exumas.

The conversation was interesting enough, but I would’ve liked to talk to a woman. I normally hang out with the guys at parties where I don’t know a lot of people. While the women stay in the kitchen and talk about babies or grandchildren or shopping sprees at outlet malls, I’m guzzling beers with the boys and discussing the latest books we’ve read. Or in many cases, talking pure nonsense which is still preferable to the woman talk. But tonight, I wanted woman talk. Was it because I missed my kids? Did I miss shopping? Was it because I hadn’t had more than a two minute conversation with another woman for over a month? Don’t know.

Once the last crumbs of the chocolate cake were pressed onto forks, the crowd thinned quickly, leaving no opportunity for drunken bonding at the bar. Bellies full, thirst sated, they were all tucked into their beds by ten, as were we.

Saturday

Saturday morning, after boat chores, we headed back to shore. The sun was already hot on our backs as we climbed the hill toting two large duffels of dirty clothes to the little black lady in The Blue Store. She runs the market and does all of the laundry while her husband sleeps on the stoop or weaves small change purses out of palm fronds.

Then we walked around to the west end of the island, over a bridge that spanned a small creek to the third store, purported to carry marine supplies. We were not the first to arrive at the locked screen door. Soon more people came and waited. Finally, someone went and roused the proprietor from his house to let us in. Wayne was in search of stainless steel bolts, and the one-armed storekeeper held the tiny cardboard boxes tightly against his chest with his stump, while picking through the hardware with his only hand. He guffawed at Wayne’s jokes. His teeth looked huge and white against his black face. Turns out they didn’t have the screws Wayne needed, but I bought two cans of New Zealand butter, no refrigeration required until opened.

On the way back to the beach we walked over the crest of the hill, and spotted a pale pink stucco church—so pretty, we had to pause just a moment to admire it. The front portal had identical arched openings on either side, so that from the hill, it formed a window to the blue green waters beyond.

At the bottom of the hill, we passed the church and the road turned to parallel the beach. Through the trees we could hear children playing. “Marco…Polo…Marco…Polo.”

I drifted back to the suburban neighborhood where I spent my pre-teen and teen years. It was considered waterfront, because it was on a wide creek, but only the very brave or the very foolish would dip into Marley Creek’s polluted waters. Instead, we spent our summers at the pool, and each summer I heard those words a million times---Marco…Polo…Marco…Polo. The community was ostentatiously called “Country Club Estates,” but was really a middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood, a misnomer not unlike the “Staniel Cay Yacht Club.”

Shopping over, we dragged our inflatable, named Fido (after our now-deceased Persian cat) up onto the beach under the shade of the casarinas. Wayne removed the outboard and placed it on a tarp. We flipped the boat over, and scraped barnacles from her bottom.

“I thought I was finished cleaning Fido’s bottom,” Wayne joked, and anyone who’s had an old long-haired cat will know what he was referring to.

Concerning my bottom, I got the tan on the back of my thighs, not by lying on a sandy, white, Caribbean beach, but by bending over and scraping.

While we are on the subject of bottoms, I can’t get into the dinghy after snorkeling. Seems my upper body strength is inadequate and my center of gravity is too low in the water. The last attempt, I thought Wayne was going to dislocate my shoulder pulling me into the boat, and if our hands had slipped, he would’ve toppled over backwards. So when Fido’s bottom was smooth as a baby’s and we returned to the Ella McQuaid, Wayne installed a ladder on the dinghy, while I did pull ups and chin ups from the swim platform in the warm, clear water.

Sunday - Mother's Day

What a day! Those who know me well, know I’m a big chicken at heart. I’m not a thrill seeker. I’ve never sky-dived, bungee-jumped or eaten a grub. Roller coasters make me as sick as horror movies. Being scared to death does not make me feel more alive. But today…today I conquered two fears and performed one amazing feat of athletic prowess.

The plan was to go to the grotto, but on the way back to the boat to deposit our clean laundry and pick up snorkel gear, the outboard stalled. Another cruiser spotted us rowing against the current, and was kind enough to tow us to our boat. Wayne spent three hours in the scorching sun, messing with spark plugs before disassembling the carburetor, then putting it back together. He pulled the cord, and it came to life.

We motored around to the entrance of the cave and tied our boat to a mooring ball. The rock, the size of a football field, was eroded, holey, and jagged. It rose thirty feet above sea-level and was capped with a web of green vines.

Fear # 1

One of my two fears was that if we didn’t visit the site at low tide, I wouldn’t be able to swim under the ledge into the cave, and my concern was reinforced as there was another woman there who seemed to be having the same problem. I’d carefully planned the perfect time for our visit when the tide was low and slack, but we’d been delayed by three hours with the outboard ordeal. Now the rock loomed in front of me, a giant obstacle, as I bounced gently in the little rubber boat.

Apprehensively, I put on my mask and flippers and dropped over the edge of the boat into water cooled by the shade of the big rock. I began swimming towards it. Fish appeared before my mask, darting back and forth to take me in, both literally and figuratively. Immediately enthralled by the sights, I paddled slowly looking at fish and coral, stopping abruptly when I bumped my head on the rock.

I had no way of knowing how far I would have to swim underwater to get into the cave, and I was afraid to try. What if I got halfway and ran out of air? Furthermore, I am really buoyant. What if I floated up and scraped my back on the craggy rocks, or worse yet what if there were mussels, or barnacles, or, even worse, something slimy growing there? I swam along the edge looking for a taller opening.

To my left I saw a large boulder that looked like it‘d been pulled away from the rock, just like the one from Sunday School pictures of Jesus’ tomb. I inched my way between the boulder and the rock, trying not to touch either and terrified at what might be lurking around the corner. Lo and behold, I found a tall entrance and I swam right in.

Oh, the sight of it! Our exclamations echoed from the twenty-five foot ceiling. Openings above our heads let in shafts of bright sunlight. It was like being inside a huge igloo. I treaded water and did a slow 180. A cormorant looked down at us from a hole in the ceiling, his cheeks quivering to cool his body. A few stalactites were forming on the sides where the walls sloped down to water level. At the opposite end of the cave, the ceiling lowered to ten feet forming a dark tunnel, a thin line of light at the end. Under water, the thin line ballooned into a round glowing blue portal to the outside. In it, I could see the shadows of fish and an occasional glint of silver, then the black silhouette of a barracuda hovering there, like he was guarding the door.

The other snorkelers left and we had the place to ourselves. Wayne took pictures with an underwater camera, while I explored. Note from 2009: I have no idea what happened to those pictures. Beneath the surface, streams of light from above were yellow moonbeams illuminating every bubble and every bit of plankton, like snow crystals flying about in headlights. Shimmering fish were dancers on a stage, all shapes and sizes and colors. They darted in and out of the spotlight, against a backdrop of coral and sea plants. Bob Mackie couldn’t have designed such beautiful costumes.

Outside, we explored the rock face. I cautiously inched into a crevice, and as my iris adjusted, large yellowtail emerged from the darkness. They were lined up in rows and columns against the black wall. I backed out, and saw the iridescent blue, green, and yellow of a queen angelfish, then the distinctive shape and black and gold of a French angel. She was as big as a cookie sheet, and floated upside down, as she feasted on sponges.

Exhausted, but exhilarated, we swam back to the dinghy only to discover that we'd forgotten to attach the ladder to its shiny new brackets.

Amazing Feat of Athletic Prowess

Take my hand,” Wayne said, reaching out to me.

“No!” I said, “I can do it!” I hate being pulled and pushed back into the boat. It makes me feel like a beached whale.

I pushed with my flippers, my torso rose from the water, but I didn’t have the strength in my arms to push up and pull myself over the edge. I tried putting a leg in first, but as I grasped for something inside the boat to hold on to, my other leg slid under the boat, and I cut my toe on the only barnacle we had missed. Both legs in didn’t work either. My bottom hung in the water like a rock in a sock. Wayne made me a loop of rope to step into. I took off my flippers, and inserted my foot, but the loop was too long and it kept swinging under the boat. Wayne made it shorter, but it felt like it was cutting a hole in my foot, as I pressed against it to stand. Finally, I put my flipper back on, inserted it into the loop, contracted my thigh muscle, and rose out of the water triumphantly. I dumped myself clumsily into the dinghy, a big satisfied grin on my face.

“I did it,” I shouted.

Wayne just looked on in wonder. What a patient man!

Our next mission was to 1) spear a fish for dinner, or 2) find conch for bait so that we could catch a fish for dinner. We motored over to the rocky edge of Staniel Cay and Wayne slid into the water holding a long yellow spear in his hand. He swam along the edge and I followed paddling the boat to keep up

Fear # 2

Unable to find a suitable prey, Wayne surfaced, removed his snorkel, and said, "Everything’s too small here. Start it up and tow me back towards the boat, but do a zig zag pattern so we cover lots of ground."

I grimaced like a characture of a person, my neck muscles clenched, my lips spread and pressed against my teeth.

He looked at me with a face that said, "For God’s sake, stop acting like a woman." I really didn't want to do it. I’m more comfortable driving Ella, the big boat, then Fido the little dinghy. I was afraid that I’d give it more gas instead of less, turn the wrong way, or in a panic shove the gear into reverse instead of forward, chopping Wayne into shark bait with the prop. This is not an unfounded fear. I’m the one who jumps up and down and squeals when the toaster catches on fire. I’m the one who once shoved our old seventeen-foot boat into forward instead of reverse and cracked the hull into the dock. Of course that was after an early morning of crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay with my best friend and two thermos jugs full off bloody marys, but the memory still haunts me.

I can do this, I said to myself. I took a deep breath and slid the boat into gear. I pulled Wayne along, stopping when he let go of the rope and dove. He came up with handfuls of conch. I threw the smaller ones back in, kept the larger until we had four decent size conch for bait. Our mission was accomplished without the use of a tourniquet and with me smoothly guiding Fido to the swim platform.

Back at the boat, Wayne, with hatchet in hand, went through his tapping and slitting routine, until all animals were removed from their shells, but by this time it was too late to go fishing. So we went out to dinner, this time at the Yacht Club. The perfect ending to a perfect Mother's Day.