Retrospective One
Nothing stays the same except the charlatans.
For the first few years, before the never ending weekend that is retirement, we saved up vacation time, and took unpaid leave, to move Meteor back up to Nova Scotia. We would do a leg then leave the boat and return to do the next leg. It was a bit like living two separate lives, dipping our toes into a future vagabond state, but rooted to our responsibilities at home. For several years we felt like those inflatable air dancers you see at car dealerships…
Our 550 nm shakedown cruise took us from Tampa to Key West and then on to the Bahamas. Within the first few hours we were sailing overnight in the Gulf of Mexico, watching with trepidation as a lightening storm lit up thunderheads some distance ahead of us. Fortunately it continued to stay ahead of us.
From the very beginning we felt the generosity of strangers that has been a hallmark of our travels (all attributed to the seductive qualities of our beautiful Meteor), as we were offered a free mooring from one of the Key West schooner tour operators, and then, feeling frisky (for a reason neither Lou nor I can recall), we stole a night at the fuel dock with a daring pre-dawn departure. Such badassery.
From Key West we made our way into the infant Gulf Stream, happy to have wind and waves in our favour, and marvelling at Meteor’s speed … slippy slim… We cut across the Bahamas through the Northwest Providence Channel around Sandy Point and out into the Atlantic, leaving Lynyard Cay, Tilloo Cay, and Elbow Cay to port. Executed a gybe in 20+ knots of wind, and sailed jauntily through the Man O’ War Channel into the serene aquamarine waters of the Abaco Sound. Less than 12 hours later the weather window slammed shut.
Elbow Cay was the location of our winter berth at the beautiful Sea Spray Resort and Marina. This was 2015. We celebrated Christmas and New Years with sock stockings, Gracie, and a Junkanoo. Performed water ballet in the pool, filmed ping pong and card games in slow motion, filmed boat maintenance in fast, drank ice cold Kalik beers, fell in love with the local “pot-cake” dogs and Green Turtle Cay, had our first dolphin encounter at the bow, and felt the tightening of our anuses (ani?) as we watched our depth gauge measure the meagre distance between the bottom of our new-to-us keel over the top of the shallow shifting sands…yikes! Fortunately Meteor draws less than 6’ so we found that the Bahamas were really quite accessible to us. Will definitely be included in our route home, if such a passage home is in our future.
4 years later, September 2019, the catastrophic category 5 hurricane, Dorian, slammed into the Bahamas, the centre of the eye passing through the cut between Tilloo and Elbow, just barely one kilometre from Sea Spray. Right where we built a sandman on the beach and swam in those intoxicating turquoise waters.
Dorian had estimated winds at 160 knots with as much as a 20 foot storm surge when it struck the Abacos. The eye of the hurricane was described as having a “stadium effect”, in other words, the appearance of an eye where the wall appears to curve out and upwards, resembling the seating of a sports stadium. A description used rarely and only for the most intense of storms. After Elbow Cay, Dorian slowed to a crawl battering Great Abaco for 3 days before moving west-northwest parallel to the eastern seaboard, making landfall at Cape Hatteras and then heading back out to sea to set up for a final smash into Eastern Canada.
On board Meteor back in Nova Scotia, we road out Dorian in Mill Cove. As we yawed and heeled at our mooring, I wondered if Dorian gave any thought to the chaos of her ways. Was her rage deliberate, her exponential energy a means to punish us for our culpability in her existence, or was she helpless, a victim of atmospheric and oceanic currents, horrified that she was unable to stop the tempest that built untethered, out of her control, and exploded against the tiniest of islands…
The devastation to the Bahamas was profound with hundreds of lives lost and billions of dollars in damage.
Sea Spray was obliterated.
Four friends who frequented the resort, purchased the property in 2022, and began the rebuild. Sea Spray Resort and Marina has been open these past two years.
Sadly my attempt to distract myself with a bit of retrospective, was short lived with my research into the devastation that was Dorian, and then by stumbling onto SharpieGate.
SharpieGate … remember that? Just one of the many incredulous acts of buffoonery that we thought we were free of after his first term ended. As Dorian approached the eastern seaboard, the unhinged charlatan claimed that Alabama was at risk of being hit, when it was not, raising an unnecessary level of alarm in that state. Rather than admit his error, he doubled-down on his false statement and at a subsequent press conference, displayed a NOAA weather map, that had been altered with a sharpie marker, to include Alabama in the path of the hurricane. I wish that the flurry of mocking sharpie memes was the end of it, but two days later, NOAA, presumably succumbing to pressure from said charlatan, published an unsigned statement to support the misinformation. Now NOAA is feeling the devastation that is Doge, and one has to wonder, if they hadn’t released that statement back in 2019, how much worse would it be for them now… as if it isn’t bad enough.
Sorry about that little bit of nastiness. To help you get it out of your head, I give you our first dolphin. Dolphins make everything better.