Sailing Ohana

When we were in Georgetown earlier this season we met a couple who said their favorite place in the Bahamas was Crooked Island. They spoke of incredible snorkeling, great spearfishing, pristine water, and the nicest people in the whole country. That couple was right. They mentioned a “restaurant” on Crooked, which has been in the same family since the 1950’s, cooking family-style meals for cruisers and fishermen. I found them on a cruiser’s app and called them on the VHF to make a reservation. The call was pretty funny because I tried to ask about the menu and what time they are open, and she just said to come at 7 and that they will make us happy. She asked for our boat name, and that was all. The restaurant is called Gibson’s, and it’s in the Landrail Settlement which is where we anchored.

The first morning on Crooked, when we were just getting up and Jackson was still asleep, we spotted a huge bait ball/feeding frenzy of birds and tuna about a half mile from our boat. Tommy and Spencer grabbed fishing poles, jumped in the dinghy, and sped off to join in. While they were gone, I heard a “zzzzzip” sound, then “thunk”, and a splash off the stern. I ran out and immediately realized that our beloved basil plant that I got at the Rincón Farmer’s Market had fallen into the water. I looked down and saw it sitting on the ocean floor, about 15 feet down. My first thought was to jump in and get it, but then I realized that I wouldn’t really be able to see well enough to grab it once I got there. Then I thought it was hopeless anyway… What plant is going to survive being fully saturated in ocean salt water? Then I thought of how we wanted to bring our plants home to Lyons with us and re-plant them in our pots there. Finally I decided that I had nothing to lose, grabbed my snorkel gear, threw on my swimsuit and dove in, pulling the plant up immediately in the first dive. I pulled up the roots and poured what seemed like gallons of fresh water, trying to rinse them out. We decided to try to find some soil at the settlement and hope for the best. Tommy and Spencer did not land a tuna on their adventure, but they had fun.

We snorkeled and wakeboarded during the day, then dinghyed to the little dock at the settlement and walked to Gibson’s for dinner. We were really early, so we decided to walk to the little market and along the way, a man named Eugene pulled over and offered us a ride. We accepted, and after chatting with him, we learned that his sister Wilhemena runs the restaurant. It was Friday and the mail boat had just arrived, so the store was full of boxes and it was pretty chaotic, and it also meant that we would have very fresh food for dinner. We grabbed a couple of things and planned to come back the following day, but Eugene explained that the settlement shuts down on Saturdays because a lot of the people there are Seventh Day Adventist. We were so grateful for the ride, as there were swarms of mosquitoes out and we would have gotten eaten alive on the walk. Dinner was a delightful, unique experience that all four of us loved. They served lobster, fresh bread, chicken, salad, Bahamian mac and cheese, conch ceviche, vegetables, and other delicious courses. Wilhemena, or “Willie”, is an intriguing woman who worked and traveled all over while her mom cooked and ran the restaurant, then came back home and took over, and has done it ever since. We ate with three other boats (older couples) and they all had interesting stories and backgrounds too. They were from Brazil, Germany, US, Norway, and they live part-time on their boats. They thought Jackson was 14, because he seems so mature, and the boys handled themselves really well during a loooooooong meal with a bunch of adults. We had to run the generator and a/c again that night because the mosquitoes were so bad that we couldn’t open our hatches.

Running low on diesel and gas, we went up to Crooked Island Resort and Marina where we were greeted at the fuel dock by a very competant dock hand named Ishmael, and later the manager of the property. As we chatted with them, we learned that they could do all of our laundry, take our trash, and they had room to host us in a very private slip for the night. They are building a hotel to add to the resort, but right now it is just a couple of rows of simple pastel-painted bungalows and a small private airstrip. It was the quiet time before all the sport fishermen show up for the beginning of Marlin season the following week. The low-key, helpful, friendly — without being intrusive — service was perfect.

From the marina we took the dinghy on the outside near the iconic lighthouse, and snorkeled all afternoon. It was deep and varied, and Tommy speared a couple of large snappers. I was adopted by a baby fish who swam in my hair and next to my mask for almost an hour. I grew attached to the little guy and every time I popped my head above water or swam to a different section of reef, I expected him to leave, but he was there every time I went back underwater.

That night the boys stayed on the boat with the a/c and a movie (after eating fresh snapper ceviche), and we went on a date for our anniversary. Ishmael was also the bartender. It was the first day for the new cook at the marina restaurant, so the owners were sampling everything and it was delicious. They even gave us really nice complimentary red wine for our anniversary. The caprese salad (my favorite) made me think about our sad basil plant that was still hanging out on the boat, getting daily doses of too much fresh water from us as we tried to keep it alive. We tried to find soil around the marina, but the dirt there is basically sand, and the only things growing in it are coconut trees and native shrubs.

The marina offered to have Mark, one of the dock hands, take us to the grocery store on Sunday morning when it opened. It seemed like the whole settlement was there to stock up on perishables. The mail boat comes every week, except sometimes when it skips a week, and this was just after a skipped week. The checkout line took forever, because they have one old-school register that requires the cashier to enter everything by hand. The locals were really nice and held our place in line even though the line organization was confusing. They spent the whole time chatting and catching up with each other in their Bahamian English and we quietly marveled at how little we understood. When I asked the cashier if there was any place nearby that I could buy some potting soil, she said no and asked why, so I explained what had happened to our basil. She immediately called over a local farmer who was there to pick up a shovel he had ordered from the mail boat, and she told him to go to her yard and give me the potting soil from the bags that her dogs had torn up. His name was Shakey and he has a small farm where he grows everything from passion fruit to cabbage. He and I walked to the cashier’s house about 30 seconds away from the store, he picked up a little hand trowel that he found in the yard, and filled a whole shopping bag with dark, rich potting soil for me! I was overjoyed as we hurried back to the marina where Tommy re-potted the basil plant in the new soil.

Our time in the marina was up, as they delivered our last bit of laundry to our boat, so we said our goodbyes and moved around to the North side of the island where we planned to stop at Lovely Bay. When we pulled up to Lovely Bay, it did not look lovely. It looked swelly and desolate, so we continued to Atwood Harbour which had been recommended by one of the couples we ate with at Gibson’s.

Atwood had better protection and was calm and beautiful. We paddleboarded, snorkeled, and wakeboarded, and we ate well… Our freezers were stocked with mahi, tuna, grouper, jack, and snapper. One night there was a serious storm with thunder and lightning that kept Tommy and me awake. The next morning we looked outside and noticed a tiny sailboat that had come in the night before. It was probably about 20 feet long, with clothes and towels hanging off of every surface, and we imagined the single-handed sailor must have had a rough night, and maybe even took on water. He swam over to our boat to say hi (no dinghy, of course) and we learned that he had sailed up from Luperon, Dominican Republic, and that he anchored at around midnight, just before the storm hit. In classic sailor form, when it started raining he pulled out all of his laundry and washed everything by hand during the storm at 2:00 a.m., which it why everything was hanging outside.

The boys were tired from constant activity, so Tommy and I went snorkeling without them to check out the reefs nearby that we had heard about. The first spot was not very interesting, and after about 15 minutes Tommy pointed out a big 6+ ft. shark swimming nearby. I later told the boys it was a great white, and they laughed and explained that great whites don’t live here. I am sure that’s true, but it was huge and scary and light gray and white, and we will forever refer to it as a great white. We think it was actually a bull shark which is no better, really. Suffice it to say, our snorkeling excursion was shorter than we expected. We stopped at two more spots; the first one had a small shark swimming by right under where I stuck my head in, and the other one was still stirred up from the storm and Tommy couldn’t stand the lack of visibility. He hates swimming in dark or unclear water where that he can’t see far, because of the imagined “Dark Water Monsters”. This day his discomfort was definitely exacerbated by the two monsters we had actually seen. We went into the harbor to go back to the boat and noticed a coral bomby that had a billion fish swimming around it. It was fun to discover that it had a warm water vent, which must be a favorite for fish.

We opened our May boxes which were full of treats and things we had run out of, and lots of things we had forgotten that we packed. Monthly boxes are the best.

It was time to move on to Long Island, but we will treasure the memories of Crooked/Acklins with just the four of us playing, learning, working, and connecting with locals.