Sailing Ohana

Now we know why the cruisers who make the trek down here are SO in love with these islands. They are uninhabited except for about 60 people who live in Duncantown and the five boats in our flotilla make up about half the boats in the anchorage. The “Hog Cay Yacht Club” is a well-built tiki hut on an “ideal beach” on Spencer’s beach rating scale. There are cliffs and caves and endless trails on land, and beautiful water with great spearfishing. Every day in the late afternoon, various cruisers meet up in the tiki hut for happy hour, the kids all come ashore and play together, and we share food, games and conversations. The first night at the yacht club we watched the sun set and finally saw the green spark. We had a fun potluck on St. Patrick’s Day and I played dominoes one night, which was a lot more fun than I expected it to be.

Every day we were there I took Morris hiking for hours, either by myself or with the other women in our group. We also did some paddleboarding around the coves where we were anchored. On one exceptional hiking day, we came upon a conch “nursery” which is a protected, shallow cove with thousands of young conch, little crabs and starfish. There are also numerous wild goats and their babies on the island. Morris cannot resist chasing them; we joked that goats are Morris’s kryptonite. We found unbelievable amounts of trash (including a plastic body form for a clothing display) washed up on the beaches, mostly from Cuba and maybe Haiti… We’re closer to Cuba here than to Georgetown. One of the women made a video: https://www.facebook.com/groups/278047153716928/permalink/511636687024639/

Tommy and the boys spent their days fishing and spearfishing, and the boys ended each day playing for hours at the beach with their friends. There are lots of sharks here so they didn’t get to jump off the boat and swim, which is a favorite activity. We have a couple of friends who are very experienced spearfishermen and have taken Tommy and Jackson with them to help show them the spearfishing ropes. The other day Tommy took Jackson, Spencer, and Oliver out by himself and they came home with six lobsters!

On our last day, while Tommy and the boys were spearfishing, I took Morris for a walk in the morning. About twenty minutes into the hike, Morris spotted a goat and took off running after it. He was gone in an instant, disappearing through the thick brush. I could hear him bark as he ran after the goat toward the ocean on the north side of the island, which has rocky cliffs and ledges that the goats can easily climb on to escape. Then it was silent except for the wind picking up as a rainstorm rolled over the islands. I spent the next couple of hours bushwacking around the island in the rain, calling for Morris with no response. Worried sick and totally exhausted, I staggered back toward our beach, with a plan to have a friend take me out in their dinghy to look for him along the shoreline toward the ocean side. As I walked out into the beach, I could see something that looked like Morris walking slowly towards me from the sharp rocky ledges to the north. He was covered in dirt and debris, his coat was brown-ish, and he was very subdued. I rinsed him off in the ocean and took him back to the tiki hut for a bowl of fresh water while we waited for the guys to come back from spearfishing. He has several cuts on his legs and pads of his paws; thankfully they are not very serious. I think the goats probably ran to the cliffs and when Morris tried to follow he ended up scrambling to keep his footing on pretty precarious terrain. 😢

I made an Ohana marker for the tiki hut out of a bottle coozy that we never use, some fishing line, coral, shells, and sea beans that I found on the beach. Sea beans are seeds that come from Africa and wash up on the beaches here (along with tons and tons of litter from Haiti and Cuba). Tommy tied it up as we made a final stop at the tiki hut before we left for the long trip back.

It was hard to say goodbye to our friends as we headed back to the Georgetown area. A few of them will stay in the Raggeds until the end of lobster season (March 31), others are traveling to different island countries and and we hope to see SV Grace up in Georgetown soon since they will be in the area.