The more things change......last thoughts on the Abacos

My father was co owner of a 49 foot Columbia Sailboat in the late 1970s.   The Sloop was named the Oklahoma Crude, not because the group was invested in Big Oil, which some of them were, but because it was a bunch of crude guys from Oklahoma who owned the boat.  At least that’s what my dad used to say with a wink and a grin.  Some of our best school and summer vacations were spent on the boat and our favorite cruising grounds were the Bahamas, and the Abacos, in particular.  I can’t say that my memories are accurate from so long ago but I do recall the names of the Cays we frequented and certainly some of the stories and absurdities are indelible.  For example, I remember Green Turtle Cay because of a bakery on the island that made the best coconut pies and I remember Treasure Cay because of an incident where we ran aground on a sand bar.  We were all told to sit on the boom while our captain (who I had a crush on, naturally) released the sheet line to it’s perpendicular position to offset the keel with our weight and we were practically dipping our toes in the water waiting for high tide to set us free!

On one holiday, the airline lost our luggage.  In those days nice clothes were expected for air travel and my mother insisted that I wear a dress and panty hose for the flight so one can imagine my dismay at the thought of wearing that attire any longer than the minute we got to the boat.  I lost the nylons and refashioned the dress into a casual look until I could get some local duds and a swimsuit!  I believe that was the very same bad weather vacation we took one December which leads to my very favorite story.  It rained every day, not just regular Caribbean squalls but a complete soaking with high winds so we were stuck in Marsh Harbour at the Conch Inn Marina.  My brother and I were happy to spend our time with the captain on dingy excursions and conch seeking expeditions when the weather broke but our stepmom, a lovely but high maintenance Chinese attorney, was pretty miserable.  I think she and my dad were having a rough patch but in any case I remember that she spent a lot of time in her cabin reading and on occasion would ask me to check on my dad who had been holding court at the Marina bar all week, which at that time was called the Conch Out.  In his defense, I am sure that he had tolerated plenty of complaints about the weather, the lost luggage and anything else and felt he had nowhere else to hide.  I invariably found him in the corner of the bar animated in a joke or tall tale with an impressively large audience.  His delivery was spectacular and so was his bar tab, I imagine.  One night, his wife had lost all patience and my orders were to escort him back to the boat in time to sober up enough for dinner in town.  It wasn’t easy to drag him away so I enlisted my young brother as my heavy.  We weren’t twenty feet down the dock when dad stopped short and arranged his face into the most serious expression.  He placed his big hands on each of our shoulders and made the following announcement.  “Children, your father is drunk.  But let this be a lesson to you, I am not driving.”  Then he ambled down the dock and boarded his vessel.

There were many experiences that created those early impressions of the Bahamas for me.  For example, we used to eat turtle steak for dinner. Please don’t hate on me.  It was delicious and I was a kid and it was the seventies when it was commonly found on menus.  I know better now.  Beautiful women would sunbath topless and it was a big deal.  Gratuity was automatically added to the check at restaurants so everyone complained about the service they weren’t getting.

I have to say that the pace is still very slow in some places even by Caribbean standards and it is still quite expensive, but the general surliness of service is occasionally redeemed by such extraordinary hospitality that it seems to even itself out.  It occurs to me that I remember more fine dining experiences than what we’ve found here so far but we’ve been happy with it, mostly, and the views and atmosphere are worth paying for, certainly.  I didn’t recognize much when we visited the Conch Inn Marina last week.  Everything seemed so small when compared to my thirteen year old memory of it.  I only recognized the long narrow finger piers in the Marina itself because I pulled my stepmom out of the water once when I heard her fall in trying to get on the boat one night!

What endures is the magnificent colors of the Abaco banks and shifting sands.  I never forgot the vivid hues of greens and blues and teals and turquoise under crystal clear water and sailing here this last month has been as breathtaking as I remember.  I loved our first days here motoring in the shallows from West End to Mangrove Cay and Great Sale Cay.  It was like gliding through a swimming pool.  Then a couple of nights in Crab Cay where we found the coconuts was a nice hideout from the wind.  We loved Green Turtle Cay and our bicycle ride and enjoyed Treasure Cay too, launching our SUPs for the first time there.  Our very favorite was Great Guana Cay where they blew the conch shell every evening at sunset and the smaller No Name Cay where we played with the piggies, but that was before we discovered Hope Town where we had a chance to fly the drone and explore a lighthouse.  If I had to choose a place to hang out for a month this is definitely one of my recommended spots especially if you’ve got a sailboat!  I loved it forty years ago and I love it here now.

There is a well known quote by Jean-Batiste Alphonse Karr that I have heard said many times.  “Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose”,  or commonly translated in English, “ The more things change, the more they stay the same”.  It couldn’t be more appropriate for the Caribbean I know, have known and will now see again. Over the years, people arrive, make their mark and fade away, restaurants and business establishments change the scenery in their era, and then the greater forces of time and nature wreak havoc on us all.  I couldn’t be more grateful for all of my experiences in the Caribbean, in any era, for I, like the islands I love, am continuously transformed.

I like Pina Coladas