Written by Hans Wilson
Tuesday – I woke up to my usual routine of peeing off the back deck, sipping coffee, and stretching my back. The raisin pumpernickel has been a hit with The Squirrel, particularly when I added crunchy peanut butter to it. I reworked the graphics The Squirrel brought, adding match lines so you can quickly compare pages, then wrote down beer names for all the GPS coordinates for our potential dive sites. Go figure. We weighed anchor and headed off to check them out, at a leisurely 1,000 rpm’s and a hull speed around 7 knots.
At anchor in the milky blue waters of west Andros.
Dave was the man in the water for the day. We would pull up to a site and he would bail into the water with snorkel gear, checking out what bounty lay below. The first site, Bud Light, was a wooden wreck and he brought back an interesting bronze and copper valve assembly to add to the decorations where we have our Board meetings. No fish.
The second site, Mutton, had a big fuel tank. Dave requested his spear and the next thing we knew he had a nice size mutton snapper, wrestling it to the boat. That was about all for that site so we moved on to the next one.
Kalik was a very productive site. There was a center console from a boat in the middle, seemingly a set up for fish habitat versus a true boat wreck. Dave checked it out and found another Mutton snapper tucked up under the console, sharing space with a big nurse shark. It wasn’t long before Dave had snapper number two, swimming to the boat, and commenting about his fight with the shark, it taking a pass at the fish on his spear. Good thing Dave was in the water, the muttons are a fast fish and hard to shoot.
I enjoyed running the boat, keeping it headed into the strong wind and waves, and trying to keep it from snap rolling when we got sideways to it all. Having someone in the water and watching out for them is a big responsibility but I enjoyed it.
The last site we hit, Miller, was just an open grass flat covered with pilchards. Dave came on board and we pushed to get to Flamingo Cay and the crab lunch we had 2:30 reservations for. Yes, there was civilization in the middle of this desolation, courtesy of the Flying Squirrel and his Bahamian connections. We arrived at Charlies’ C-16 waypoint, which also matched our Coors site, which showed some manner of habitat on the aerial.
The channel to Flamingo Cay Rod and Gun Club was what we now famously describe as a wheel channel. Basically they run a boat through the channel, over time, prop dredging to get additional depth. The Squirrel, Em, and me piled into the dinghy and blasted down the channel to the resort. The steering on the dinghy was slowly failing, apparently low on hydraulic fluid, so it was a challenge to keep it in the channel. Dave didn’t like the surrounding depths so he moved the big boat further offshore.
The waterway “Wide Opening” was choppy and after a fairly long run we peeled out of Wide Opening and into a mangrove tidal creek. The resort was very nice. We missed our lunch reservations but Charlie and Cindy, our hosts, sat with us and fed us some snacks, Elk sausage and Blue Crab claws cooked in a wonderful Cajun sauce. I had run back out to pick up Dave and came back in to join everyone. Lots of talk about the resort, how Charlie manages it, water issues, how he hauls his recyclable trash back to New Providence, etc. They were getting ready to feed their resort guests, mostly Bonefishermen and their charter guides, so we loaded up and headed out of the mangrove cut and into Wide Opening.
The Squirrel and Diamond Dave hanging at the Flamingo Cay Rod and Gun Club.
Welcome statue at the resort.
Everyone was feeling good, in part because we missed lunch but kept on drinking, our Bahamian tradition. I am sure Dave was feeling good because he shot some fish and had loaded the fridge with food. I felt great from being able to learn more about running the boat in heavy wind. The Squirrel felt great because his was off the clock, satellite phone wasn’t working, no one could reach him, so he had no choice but to relax. I think Em felt the same way for the same reasons. So we decided to chug up the coast for a while since we still had some daylight. Em was at the helm, the music was turned up, and we continued our drinking party.
The wiggy brothers dancing on the foredeck, much to the amusement of “Capt. Em” at the controls, below.
When we finally anchored, it was a beautiful sunset, and The Squirrel set about cooking while Dave cleaned the fish. We ate the last of the bratwurst, added some smoked sausage, finished almost 90% of the potato salad, and also heated up the left over spaghetti, adding some crab that Charlie gave us. Everyone was pretty toasted and it wasn’t long before we crashed. I can’t go to sleep on a full belly, so I sat on the back deck looking at the stars, listening to the tinkle of ice in my scotch. I turned off the deck and underwater lights to see the stars and Em joined me for a little while. It was so windy you couldn’t sit upstairs on the foredeck. I listened to some music on my Droid, then finally crashed. It was a good day.
Diamond Dave and Capt. Em with a nice Mutton Snapper.