Exumas Exhale
The water just gets more clear, and more shallow...
Yesterday I dropped the anchor in Sampson Cay in the Central Exumas. The water was turquoise and clear. The bottom was sand. Laughing Gull’s keel had maybe a foot of water under it. A small nurse shark wandered by (at least I THINK it was a harmless nurse shark). This tableau is the Full Bahamas Experience, and it has got me bad. In the coming days I’ll poke around the Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park.
Since leaving George Town, LG has found her way into a series of good anchorages. Black Point on Great Guana Cay was vast, calm, and sandy. So perfect that it was a great chance to get up the mast (with the help of visiting friend, Steve Yang, who took the lead photo up top) to look over the rig. All was as it should be up high. And the view was unique.
I dropped Steve at Staniel Cay a few days ago, so he could fly back to the real world and go back to being an orthopedic surgeon in New York City (which he is very, very good at). And I’ve been doing laundry and boat chores, and getting back to some writing since.
I’m glad to have the peace of a quiet and uncrowded anchorage because the more I reflect on the George Town experience, the more I find I want distance from it. It is without question a unique location, with long-time cruisers organizing and guiding a massive floating community. But it is too crowded and busy for my humble tastes. There are too many people everywhere you go, and too many dinghies buzzing here, there and everywhere. There are too many cruisers complaining about everything from the new mooring fields to how new arrivals anchor or tie up their dinghies at the crowded dinghy dock (and snarking and engaging in childish spats on the George Town Cruisers Facebook group). It reminded me of a famous experiment in which rats were given everything they needed—a “rat utopia”—except space. Over time, as the population grew, rat behavior deteriorated, leading to negative interactions and societal collapse. Perhaps the George Town cruisers utopia should take note. I can see stopping there again to re-supply and make any needed repairs. But only to jump off to somewhere else.
Being in George Town for a little over a week also crystallized something else for me: modern dinghy culture is a lot like modern pickup culture. I haven’t really cruised seriously for a few decades, and last time I did dinghies—ranging from hard rowing dinghies like the Dyer Dhow to basic inflatables— were functional but somewhat of an afterthought. These days, no one has rowing dinghies (if you row your dinghy people buzz over and ask if you need help) and almost everyone has hard-bottom, high-powered, planing dinghies that can run for miles. Some of them are pretty pimped out with center-consoles, and all kinds of lockers and seating. And you get the sense that many dinghy owners take the same pride and interest in the capability and setup of their dinghy as might a Ford F-150 owner with lots of accessories.
I got rid of LG’s hard-bottom planing dinghy and 15hp engine because I wanted something way lighter that I could deflate and carry on deck while offshore. I didn’t like the way the upturned aluminum bottom AB dinghy LG came with took up the whole foredeck offshore (or the hassle of lifting it on-deck, especially solo). And I also wanted to get away from a gas dinghy engine, and move to electric (I dislike carrying gas—it always spills, usually on me—and I wanted to play around with reducing fossil fuel consumption).
I knew that I would be sacrificing a lot of speed and range. But I came from an era in which dinghies didn’t have that much speed and range to start with, so I never developed a new normal belief that a dinghy has to go 20-mph, blast a playlist, and be able to transport me miles to town or a snorkeling reef. While I have to think a bit more carefully about where I anchor, the conditions, and where I want to get to in the dinghy, my trusty old blow-up Walker Bay, with a 3hp-equivalent Torqeedo, has been fine. And, in fact, I am considering moving back to something like a Dyer Dhow, when the Walker Bay starts to fall apart. I love the peace and zen of using my own muscles to propel me slowly across the water.
In George Town, no matter where I was anchored, high-speed dinghies were everywhere, zipping to town, to yoga, and to beaches. And somehow, over the decades, it became acceptable to blast right through any anchorage, throwing up wake. Gone are the days, apparently, when minimizing wake in an anchorage was a serious principle. Gone are the days of rowing gently and quietly through the anchorage, admiring boats and having a pleasant word with other cruisers if they were on deck.
Dinghy culture today involves so much racing about, making noise and wake, and so little quiet interaction (quite apart from any consideration of fossil fuel consumption). It is like cruisers gave up their busy landlocked lives for the pleasures of slowing down and tuning into nature, but forgot to give up their over-scheduled suburban habit of endlessly rushing around in their cars, usually solo and with the windows rolled up. Just as the Slow Food movement tries to recapture tradition, and promotes the benefits and pleasures of taking one’s time, I hereby announce myself in favor of a Slow Dinghy movement. I welcome any others (especially you, George Town).
News Of Note:
Super-charged Hurricane Season? I usually ignore most predictions regarding how many named storms there might be. But with ocean temps off the charts I have a sneaking suspicion that this warning may be worth paying attention to:
Porter added that the water temperatures in the Main Development Region (MDR) at the end of January were a staggering 65% higher than the next closest year, a clear indication of how unusually warm the water is in this critical area of the Atlantic Ocean.
"Any storms that do form will have the potential to rapidly strengthen, even close to land, due to the exceptionally warm waters," Porter said.
The combination of building La Niña and historically warm water will lay the groundwork for a blockbuster season.
"We expect that the Gulf Coast, especially the Texas coast, will be at a higher risk for direct impacts from a tropical system this year," Pastelok added.
So True: What cruisers are like when someone comes to anchor nearby. (The other day someone told me that when you stand in your cockpit watching with your hands on your hips, it is known as having your “bitch wings” out)…
Moment Of Animal Zen: even chimps like to scroll…
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Always a treat to read Tim. Enjoy life.
Yes! High powered dinghys defeat the purpose of slow travel by yacht. Plus, think of the exercise benefit of rowing to shore they’re missing.