North Eleuthera – Nature’s Powers

Calypso's Fire in a Hatchet Bay sunset

We were welcomed to Eleuthera by Rainbow Cay and the turquoise waters of its northern cove and white sand beach that was as ideal as any postcard you could conceive.  I jumped off the boat after breakfast to swim across the harbor toward the rocks in hopes of finding a lobster dinner for the Captain and myself, but was fairly disappointed in the amount of sea life there was in general – definitely no lobsters to be found!  After such a hard go of it the day before, the Captain and I decided to take the day to clean the boat, relax, and do some swimming in the area to just unwind.  Unfortunately, the night of rocking due to sea swells was enough of an annoyance that the next morning, we were a bit wound up again and ready to work our way back up to the original destination the night before: Alice Town off Hatchet Bay.

We sailed the two and half miles north to the man-made cut in the rocks with ease and peace – a great sail speckled with colorful houses along the jagged rock cliffs of Eleuthera.  Once we were close, we started looking for the opening in the rocks we were promised was there, though the charts had warned us that the opening would be hard to see before we were right up on it…  The charts weren’t kidding!  Hatchet Bay was once a lake that has had the seawall surrounding it cut open with a roughly 40-foot opening in order to allow boats to enter the bay for protection from the sea and weather.  Now, to fit a boat that is 10 feet in width through a ~50-foot opening may sound easy, but the waves of the sea want to push said boat into the north side of the opening, making for a breath-holding adventure!  Needless to say (I hope), I did not take any pictures as I steered my boat - and home – through the opening!

A loooong walk

Once in the calm, protected harbor, we were able to tie on to a free mooring ball (one of 10 that were there for boaters’ use – what a nice town!) and walk around Alice Town in search of a cold beer and some internet.  We found both along with a very nice proprietor of the Front Porch restaurant, a place where we were happy to get some local knowledge and paid for two drinks what we had budgeted for four.  We could tell from our brief walk through town (we walked through almost all of it in this “brief” time) that Alice Town was a quiet, inviting place with nice, welcoming people and a hospitality which lets a visitor know they are welcome for as long as they need to settle in… which would come in handy over the next few days.

Going in!

The following day was overcast, so we packed a picnic and grabbed our headlamps to head for the Hatchet Bay Caves, an adventure that grabbed our attention the day before as we gleaned some of the local knowledge at the restaurant.  As the Captain had never been spelunking before, this was a bat-included escapade we wanted to take full advantage of!  The walk was a might further than we had been lead to believe (we decided this 45 minutes into a “15 minute” walk), but it was a pleasant day of cloud cover and we were given the chance to see the flora of the area better than we could by boat.  Eventually, we were picked up by a nice young lady who was happy to help out and have five minutes worth of conversation about America and her desire to go there as she drove us to our destination.

Rage fills me...

After another short walk, we finally reached the mouth of the cave and realized that we were not entering a Carlsbad Cavern-type area that would be well-lit with stairs chiseled into the side.  There was a fence with a sign asking for visitors to help with the preservation of a cave that has been severely damaged and harassed throughout a century of wall-carving and spray painting so that everyone can definitively know for generations to come that, yes, “Will Wuz Here in 2009”… and, in 2009, Will Wuz an A-hole (in my humble opinion).  Something that never ceases to amaze me – so would probably shock most others – is that stalagmites and stalactites are some of the most beautiful earthen creations to me, among Mother Nature’s most wondrous artwork being the great columns and elephant ears shaped by millennia of water droplets and patience underground.  I cannot even begin to fathom where the idea comes from in some people’s minds that it’s alright to interfere with these sculptures by simply touching them, so you can imagine my absolute disgust with people who have no qualms with defacing them with spray paint!  O.K., enough of my high horse.

We had to work to find this gem!

It took Rob and me about an hour of following a simple strand of yarn put there to lead the way to get through most of the mile-long cavern of twists, levels (reached by branches-nailed-together ladders), and large rooms with small bats on the ceilings before we stopped for lunch.  During the walk and as we sat to eat, we would turn off our headlamps and thoroughly soak in the complete darkness that accompanies being that far underground.  Sitting in your bedroom with the lights turned off can never compare to the absolute darkness that exists in the middle of a cave and I have no idea why that is; it is just a darkness that has no equal.  As I was in the middle of reading Anne Rice’s “Interview with a Vampire” at the time, there were bound to be many a vampire joke in the midst of our “time below”.  They only got really creepy when we spotted the lights of what we presumed were other spelunking adventurers, though we never heard other voices or saw anyone else…  After our walk back to the road, we stuck out our thumbs and received another ride from another nice young lady who was headed our way, helping us to return to Calypso’s Fire before the rain began.

Our way out of the Under Earth

The rain lasted the next two days… STRAIGHT!  There were fairly high winds that accompanied the rain, so we didn’t want to sail anywhere; everything we would have done on land would have required us being wet (read: “the Captain would be cold”) and spending money which we don’t have.  So, we read… and read… then read some more.  I created some pretty cool meals, including teaching myself how to make large samosas and rice-filled egg rolls.  Then, I read some more.  It was a quiet time of reflection and learning how to be quiet and peaceful, though I fought it and got antsy so much of the time.  I’m learning that maybe – just maybe – this is part of the life-lesson I am supposed to be acquiring from this sailing lifestyle (yes, “lifestyle”, Robin!) we are a part of at this time: quiet time without TV, internet, agenda, or other human interaction (outside my husband’s sporadic conversation between books) is a blessing I have not been given before, either by my environment or myself.  It was fairly uncomfortable, I have to admit, which begs the question, “Why?”  There is no need to be uncomfortable in my boat, in my home, in the books of my choosing, in my skin; so, why would two days of semi-forced semi-solitude be enough to make me go stir crazy?  As you will read in later blogs, this is a question that continues to be asked and probed into during this journey of ours.

THE Glass Window

Once the rain subsided and we were able to leave the boat, there was a long and well-needed yoga session overlooking the bay, then a long and uphill bike-ride that I nearly threw the towel in during.  Thankfully, I have a very persistent and determined (read: “pain-in-the-ass-drill-instructor-type”) husband who lightly encouraged me to keep riding through the tough hill in order to see more of the land and get some much-needed exercise.  In the end, I was very grateful for his nudging because I felt much better to have pushed my body towards its endurance limits AND I was able to get basil that was literally plucked out of the ground in front of us!

The Captain taking in the rolling seas

The next day, we made our way up to the Glass Window near the north end of the island, enabling us to get out of the murky bay for a day and get in some good swimming.  Standing on the narrow piece of rock that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Bight of Eleuthera was a surreal experience: rolling, white-capped waves slamming into the rock on one side, wrinkly glass-like waters on the other.  Seeing the rolling waters of the Atlantic was - I have to admit - a little daunting considering we will need to cross those waters in the near future in order to get to the DominicanRepublic.  While I realize that we have already once done this type of crossing to get from Florida to the Bahamas, we’ve been so nicely sheltered in the Banks of the Bahamas since then, which are typically too shallow to reach very high wave heights and have decent-sized land masses to keep the swells down.  Both of these contribute to calmer waters and smoother sailing… You know, the kind of sailing that does NOT lead to me being hunched over the side of the boat feeding the fish a warm meal (a position I have not found myself in since the wristbands came into me life)!

The calmer side of sailing

After a night which included more rolling than was comfortable and a good amount of dragging our anchor out away from land (so we weren’t that worried), we headed back down to Hatchet Bay and got another chance to make sure we knew how to steer the boat with its eye-of-a-needle opening to contend with.  It was a nice night on a mooring ball with little movement side-to-side or dancing across the water while dragging our anchor.  A good night’s sleep afforded us the energy to move on down the island the next day to Governor’s Harbor, a good place to start the next blog entry.