Location: Spanish Cay
When Jack, Dad, and I awoke this morning a booming voice greeted us on the radio, "hello, Great Sail sailors," it called out of the receiver. It turned out that the mysterious voice was the little light that I had seen on shore in the night. His anchor had drug in the night, taking him so close into shore that he could have thrown a baseball up into the trees, or so he said.
We had planned on clearing customs in Green Turtle Cay, but upon the anonymous voice's advice we went to Spanish Cay instead. We got there too late in the day to clear customs but the people at the marina were very accommodating. Technically only the captain of the ship can get off the boat until she clears customs. The people at Spanish Cay said "we didn't see nothing." So Jack and I got to stretch our legs. The next morning a woman from customs came to clear us, the process was quick and easy but when it was all over Dad convinced her to tell Jack and I that something was wrong with our papers and we would have to spend the week in the boat. She was a great actress, but you only needed to look into Dad's twinkling eyes, overflowing with pent up laughter to find the lie. We used the day to relax, explore, and use the internet to let the world know that we had arrived (none of us purchased international phone plans). Just before sunset Dad, Jack, and I went out to explore the local beaches. The first beach we came to was a conch shell cemetery. They were everywhere. Either a fisherman cleans the conch out in the bay and the tide carries all the shells here or the locals clean them out right on the beach. Each shell is bleached white by the sun. I picked out a few favorites but both Dad and Jack said that once I find a new pink one the white ones that I found here will get thrown overboard. We'll see about that. The second beach we went to was more of a traditional beach with little protection, it stretched out into the ocean. You could see the waves breaking on the reef less than a mile out. All in all they weren't the best beaches. They were all white sand and palm trees but they weren't beaches that sloped down to the ocean and the whole coastline of Spanish Cay had a fair amount of trash swept in with the tides strewn on its shores. It was sad that this oasis, while mostly untouched directly by the outside world could still be so scarred by it. I only saw one car on the island while we were there. There was only one road running north and south. In some places the road crumbled into sand or was overrun by grass. When the road ended it just slowly ceased to exist. There was no cul-du-sac, no speed limit signs, and no lines of any kind on the road. Every house had their driveway built off of that one road. The majority of the houses were medium sized and fairly good looking but there were only about twenty of them on the island. Around a third of the houses were currently unoccupied, awaiting a tourist trade that apparently picks up in March/April. There seemed to be two businesses on the island, the marina and the power plant. The marina housed the only supply store, bar, bait shop, and restaurant on the island. The owners could catch a ferry to Coopers Town, on Powell Cay, for immediate supplies but if they ran out of milk it might take ten days to get a delivery from their regular supply boat "if they were lucky." The second commercial building was the power plant located in a teensy tiny red house. You knew it was the power plant because of the roar that emanated from under the roof. The building was occupied only by machinery, you could stroll right in.
Spotted: land crab & baby shark
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