We bagged plans to continue north up the Exumas as the weather reports were getting a bit ominous and there really is no good place to seek all round shelter for a storm in the northern Exumas. We will just have to catch Norman Island and Hawksbill the next time around. Chris Parker, the weather guru we listen to on SSB radio each morning was sounding a bit worried about the ugly potential of a low pressure system forming in the area. Words like "Tropical Storm Potential" and "Force 8 winds" were mentioned so we said goodbye to Warderick Wells and set out to motor across Exuma sound (again), this time with the island of Euluthera as our destination.

As we were leaving Warderick Wells, we spotted our old friend Remy the Remora. We have had two of these somewhat ugly looking fish hitchhiking with us since at least Black Point Settlement. These are sucker fish. They attach themselves to the bottom of the boat and get a free ride and they eat the food scraps we throw overboard. Taylor, as she does with pretty much all the fish we see, gave them names. Remy was the big one. (Taylor does not limit this naming game only to fish we see but do not catch. She named the first Mahi-Mahi we caught Margaret and she had no apparent qualms at all about chowing down on Margaret for dinner that night!) I was a bit miffed that these fish were still hanging about; I figure any stow-aways should have to earn their way as crew. Who needs these nasty looking fish slowing the boat down? Taylor solved this dilemma the next time we had to flush poo overboard as the fish apparently find this a tasty treat! Disgusting perhaps.... But I guess they are earning their place as crew. Janitors we will call them.

Euluthera harbored promise as a very special destination for us because Michele lived on the island for several years growing up on the US Navy Base that once occupied a large location in the center of the island. This base was closed by the Navy around 1980 and we had no idea what to expect in seeking it out today but it definitely gave the island a special feeling of attraction to us.

We arrived in Rock Sound at the southern end of the island in muggy humid weather having luckily dodged a few small squalls on the passage over. Crossing the Davis Channel and turning up for Rock Sound was a tad interesting given that it is so shallow and the channel fairly narrow but we got anchored up off Rock Sound Settlement without any real excitement.

Rock Sound turned out to be yet another quaint Bahamian town offering a small grocery store, a couple of tiny restaurants and a few other tourist focused businesses but overall it was a sleepy little village where nothing happens fast. We toured their famous (according to them... I had never heard of it before) "Ocean Hole" which is a very large blue hole around which they have built a nice park. The local kids were swimming in the hole and feeding lots of fish who clearly hang around expecting to be fed frequently (and are not disappointed). We inquired about the depth of this hole and were told with straight faces "bottomless". I guess the folks over on Long Island who say Deans Blue Hole is the worlds deepest have not heard about the bottomless blue hole in Rock Sound!

The weather continued to be rainy and humid so we decided to abandon plans for motoring up to Alabaster Bay (no protection) and instead rent a van with air-conditioning and tour the entire island with our friends on Amazing Grace II. This worked out great, AC was a real treat! We drove all the way up the island and spent extra time driving through Alicetown, Government Harbor and several other small towns. Euluthera is very different from any other island we have visited with far more lush vegetation and successful looking small farming efforts.

We also found the old Navy Base, Michele actually recognized the section of road where she used to travel to school on the bus each day and the rough looking small side road that turned off for the base.

I really had no idea what to expect. I knew that this had been a fairly large and sophisticated base used for missile tracking and anti-submarine warfare and I hypothesized that after the US Navy left the Bahamian Govt. would have either sold off sections of the base for various uses or put it to use in some capacity for their own purposes. Surely a large, technically complicated, self supporting and fully developed community would find some use?

Nope. The place was a total ghost town of destruction and ruins. When the US Navy left that was the end. When the last man out flipped off the last light switch, that was last purposeful action to take place at this base. The entire place was eerie and slightly disturbing almost as if you could expect to find a long dead corpse around any corner. Many of the buildings had collapsed, all of the windows had long since been blown out by Hurricanes and other storms and all that remained were tattered and decaying shells. The roads were mostly overgrown and trees grew up through many of the buildings. Lots of structures were not visible because the vegetation had utterly consumed them leaving only dark shadows buried in green. The large catchment basins where overgrown with many trees having taken root and mud flats filled in the bottoms. The power station was a dilapidated ruin, the utility poles were all stripped of wires and the tennis courts were covered with 30 years of fallen tree limbs and the detritus of a forest again taking over the land.

Michele recognized an amazing amount of the base and through her eyes we were able to glimpse what this place looked like before it was abandoned. We found her old house and shot many pictures of what is left (see the gallery) along with the base commissary, community center and chapel, top secret military office building (the kids got a kick out of checking that out as if some KGB sleuth may still be snooping around for long lost secrets), power plant and fuel depot, base HQ complete with brig, motor pool, officers housing and enlisted men's barracks and many other structures. This was quite the facility and it was easy to imagine what it once looked like with pristine manicured lawns, crisply uniformed staff busy at work and military families making it home.

For such a thing to have been allowed to simply sink back into the ground is a waste difficult to comprehend. The local man we rented the van from (who has lived here all his life and remembers the base well) explained that the Bahamian Govt. had attempted to dramatically raise the fee for the land lease upon renewal and the US Navy decided they didn't need the base that bad. So they walked away and the Bahamian Govt. failed to do anything with the complete and operational base they were left with. They did not even make an effort to remove any of the vast equipment that was left behind (trucks, cars, bulldozers, generators, pumps.... Huge amounts of equipment). The Navy made little effort to salvage equipment before they left and nobody made any effort to save anything once they were gone. The result is what a fully functional Navy Base looks like when everyone just ups and walks off one way taking nothing but their personal possessions with them as they go.

It was a hoot walking around and picturing Michele as a cool-aid tongued young girl playing and laughing in this wasteland. We walked along the pink sand beach on the ocean side of the base and drove over to the old Navy depot on the banks side. We found the small school where all the base children had attended, also in ruins. It was both fascinating and disturbing to stand in the large central meeting room of the school where Michele had once participated in the school play while her parents and all the other military families from the base watched and see nothing but destruction and bats flying around now.

We continued north up Euluthera by car all the way to Glass Window. This is a geographic feature where the island narrows to nothing and the tiny gap is spanned by an impressive bridge. On one side you have the vast deep blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean and on the other the placid aquamarine green of the Bahamian banks while under the bridge the Atlantic swell smashes into the rocks with soaring grandeur.

With the local weather improving (the low pressure has drifted north) we headed up to Hatchet Bay. This bay is man made with a 90 foot wide section of the cliff that used to separate the land locked stagnant pool from the ocean blown away back in the 1970s. The result is a very protected harbor with an entrance that demands your attention. We spent a peaceful but buggy night on one of the free mooring balls in Hatchet Bay and the next day we sailed and motored up through Current Cut at Current Island. This very narrow cut separates the Atlantic from the Bahamian banks to the west of Euluthera and the amount of tidal flow through the cut is staggering. We timed our arrival for slack high tide but there was still over 2 knots of current to fight going through. The skinny route runs very close to shore south of the cut, then up and around with jagged rocks on one side and sprinkled coral heads and shallows on the other. Not something to be done casually or by trying to follow a GPS track, I was plenty happy to see the cut in our wake.

With the seas reported to be 7-9 feet between Euluthera and the Abacos and the winds dead on the nose we headed up for Spanish Wells to wait on better weather for crossing. Spanish Wells proved to be unique in our Bahamian experience to date!

Spanish Wells is not a resort town and in fact tourism is clearly a minor piece of their economic focus. This place is all about fishing... hard-core serious fishing. Over 75% of Bahamian lobster production comes from Spanish Wells fishermen. The town is obviously affluent. The homes are all brightly painted, the yards are lush with real glowing green grass and splendid gardens behind most houses. There are lots of new cars though most people use motorized golf carts for transportation. There are shops in abundance and the community is obviously well organized, educated and sophisticated. The people here are unlike any other Bahamian settlement we have visited. This is obvious immediately as the number of very fair skinned and blond individuals with blue eyes could make one mistake that they had arrived in a Scandinavian village that somehow was plopped down in the tropics. The people here also speak with a completely different accent from the other Bahamian towns we have gotten to know. Its almost more kin to a southern accent from the States than a traditional Bahamian accent, something we all thought as the cute teenage blond girl who served us at the local restaurant referred to our group as "Ya'll". Folks here are extremely outgoing and friendly with everyone waving to each other and taking time to say hello and have a few words. It reminds me very much of a Leave It To Beaver episode.... But somehow set in a tropical paradise.

The locals have a Manatee hanging around who has been adopted by the community as something of a pet. The Manatee showed up last December and it is fed several meals a day at a specific spot in the harbor. This Manatee is pregnant and now famous as marine biologist from all over have come to meet her. No live Manatee birth has ever been viewed in person and it is hoped that this could be the first. She is due any day now, Taylor hopes to be the first person to ever see a live Manatee birth and thus to launch her new Marine biologist career. She just may pull it off!

Yesterday we took the ferry and a taxi over to Harbor Island on the other side of Euluthera for the day. Harbor Island and Spanish Wells have apparently had a good natured competition going for which is the "best" island for some time. Harbor is all about tourism.... Spanish is about the fish... both are incredibly gorgeous and full of smiling happy people. We spent several hours swimming on the huge pink sand beach, walked all around town staring at all the beautiful homes and gardens (my favorite, "Kings Place" is for sale! 3 large homes, immaculate gardens, beach access deeded, all on 5 full acres in a prime central location..... ALL for only $8.9 million! Where is my check book? ) and we had snacks and drinks before taking the ferry back. Harbor Island is beautiful, among the most gorgeous places we have seen.

We hope to motor out of Spanish Wells on the high tide early tomorrow morning. The south entrance to the harbor here is very shallow, we must have a high tide to get over the shallow areas so that dictates a dawn patrol. Yuck! We will head out and down about 5-6 miles to Royal Island where there is a nice harbor where we can anchor. Then we can leave out very early the next morning for the crossing (about 55 miles total) up to the Abacos. We would like to be there by late Thursday. The weather is settled but the seas are still rough, by Thursday we hope to have more flat seas and still have a bit of west wind for sailing north but it may turn into another motor trip. I sure hope not... motoring sucks! We are going to seek a nice marina at some point in the Abacos for a couple of nights so we can bask in the A/C and get some serious boat cleaning and maintenance projects done.