Dinner at Joe’s had been excellent as always. Birgit and I had managed to demolish two platters of colossal stone crab claws with mustard sauce, and then wolf down a serving of key lime pie to finish off the meal. Joe’s was one of only a very few restaurants in the world where you could usually still order the rarely available colossal size crab claws. They came dearly at fifty dollars for three claws the size of your hand, but it was well worth the price once in a while. I’ve always loved the whole concept behind the stone crab fishery. No crab is ever killed. Rather, just one claw is twisted off and the crab is returned to the sea to grow another one, making it a sustainable harvest from year to year.
Our Dutch couple thoroughly enjoyed their afternoon sail around the bay the next day. After dropping them back at their hotel, we’d stopped off at the Publix market on Biscayne to stock up for the trip across to the Bahamas. By five o’clock in the evening we’d dropped a lunch hook just off one of channels by Stiltsville near one of the funky dwellings erected on pilings to wait for the small fleet of J-24’s to arrive.
Stiltsville has a long and colorful history dating back to the thirties. "Crawfish" Eddie Walker built a shack on stilts above the water in 1933, toward the end of the prohibition era, allegedly to facilitate gambling, which was legal at one mile offshore. Crawfish Eddie sold bait and beer from his shack and was known for a dish he called chilau, a crawfish chowder made with crawfish he caught under his shack. Thomas Grady and Leo Edward, two of Eddie's fishing buddies, built their own shacks in 1937. Shipwrecking and channel dredging brought many people to the area and more shacks were constructed, some by boating and fishing clubs and others functioned as rather notorious nightclubs. Local newspapers called the area "the shacks". The entire collection of ramshackle stilt houses falls under the purview of the National Park system which would love to see all traces of it vanish. There are dozens of lawsuits at any given time working their way through the court system pertaining to those few structures not yet destroyed by hurricanes .
Birgit fixed us a light supper of snapper filets pan fried in clarified butter on the stovetop in the galley, together with potato salad from our earlier foray to Publix. I worked at the chart table amidships under the companionway plotting our course to Bimini. At first glance, the course I laid out would seem to make no sense. The narrow width of the Florida Straits between the mainland and the islands of the Bahamas constricts the northward flowing current of the Gulf Stream. This constriction can push you along to the north at four to six knots depending on the weather conditions. Big swells and storms can build up in a very short time at any point during your crossing. The north flowing current means that you must angle into it to arrive at your chosen destination in the Bahamas, steering a course far to the right of what you’d expect to be the case. It was looking like we could sail on a broad reach with decent weather all the way to Bimini. This would be great news for the smaller J-24’s. These are a class of flat out racing sailboats which carry only a small outboard motor stowed below for emergency propulsion. They are agile little craft, but no match in speed under sail for a fifty foot trimaran like my Vamp. Birgit and I would make the crossing with a reefed mainsail and minimal jib to allow the smaller J-24’s to keep up with us. We’d time our departure so we’d arrive in the Bahamas at first light for good visibility.
Clark and AJ arrived alongside and tied up to us in their sloop named 3/4 Time as we were finishing supper. Birgit gave them a hand up while I was doing some minimal cleanup in the galley down below.
As I rejoined them in the cockpit, I said, “Hi, guys. Good to see ya. It looks like a perfect night for it. As soon as everyone gets here we’ll pick a ship to ship channel for everyone to stand by on so we can all keep in touch.”
One by one the other four boats arrived. We all hoisted sails and slipped out of the shallow channels of Stiltsville into the Atlantic. The night was overcast and obscured what little moon was visible. When we reached the halfway point across the stream hours later, the seas had built only to about seven feet, and conditions remained well nigh optimal. The only incident that occurred the whole way was when I spotted a freighter plowing northwards up the Stream towards us. I got on the radio and gathered all the J-24’s to us like chicks to a mother hen. J-24’s don’t present much of a radar target, and their running lights tend to be hard to spot given the low profile of the small sloops. Vamp, on the other hand, has a big radar reflector up on the rigging, and highly visible running lights mounted on the masthead sixty-five feet above the deck.
By seven-thirty in the morning our small fleet had all found spots to anchor off Alice Town, and everyone was catching up on sleep, either down below, or sprawled on top of piles of sail bags on the decks. Now that we’d gotten the small fleet of boats safely across the unprotected waters of the Stream, they could be left to make their way unescorted to Green Turtle Cay on their own timetables. I had a brief nap, not overly tired as Birgit and I had shared spells at the wheel overnight. We were both used to functioning this way from many days alone together of offshore sailing. The wind was still holding steady at about fifteen knots and blowing in the right direction for a broad reach around the tip of Great Abaco Island, and onwards to Green Turtle Cay. It would be a long day ahead as there was still over one hundred nautical miles left to cover, but with the big spinnaker set we could be dropping the anchor at Green Turtle long before sundown. The smaller boats would probably take two days to cover the same distance. Vamp’s Hood sail handling systems were quite sophisticated and easily operable by one person, except in the heaviest weather.
I nudged Birgit awake, and said, “Sweetie, I’m going to get us underway. I’m looking forward to conch chowder and a grouper sandwich on Bahama bread at the Green Turtle club tonight if that’s ok with you.”
I got only a sleepy response of “Uh huh”. I waved at Clark and AJ sitting in their cockpit as we motored out of the anchorage. After clearing the harbor, I set the mainsail and spinnaker. We were soon skimming along towards Great Abaco with the portside hull lifting slightly out of the water and a school of six dolphins frolicking in our bow wave. As the dark blue of the Providence channel changed to the azure transparency of Great Abaco sound, I began to smell delicious odors of brewing coffee and bacon wafting up from the galley below.
Birgit appeared up the steps with her skimpy snowy white bikini accentuating her all over tan. It was a vision that never failed to stir my libido, even now after almost a year of sharing the same bunk. She offered a platter of bacon, eggs, and hash brown potatoes, together with a mug of still steaming coffee, saying, “Hey Jimmy, I thought you might be ready to eat breakfast. Where are we?”
“Thanks, those smells have had my stomach rumbling for a while now. We’re off The Hole in the Wall at the tip of Great Abaco and should be anchored off the club by cocktail time. If you’ve eaten already, go ahead and take her for a bit.”
As always, our shallow draft and the crystal clear waters of the Bahamas made this familiar route past the string of cays a delight to sail. The waters were no more than five fathoms deep the whole way. One could sit mesmerized for hours gazing over the side trying to spot things on the seafloor rushing by in the clear water. After a nap I rigged a Cuban yo-yo to one of the stern cleats and trolled a feather jig. Less than a hour later I heard the snap of the clothespin announcing a strike and hauled in a beautiful bull dolphin of about fifteen pounds. After cleaning the fish and putting the fillets on ice in the galley, I washed down all the blood and scales in the cockpit with the salt water hose. I then relieved Birgit at the wheel for the last hour and a half sail into Green Turtle Cay. After finding a spot in the shallow harbor to drop the hook, we both changed into clean khakis and knit polo shirts, with Vamp embroidered on the pockets, and took the dinghy ashore to the Green Turtle Club for happy hour. By ten o’clock we were back on Vamp in our big double bunk with Birgit snoring softly beside me. Sleep eluded me. All I could think about was that big stack of plastic wrapped bricks of high grade pot sitting in Clark and AJ’s laundry room. I was no stranger to drug use. I’d hit the club scene in New York when I was younger, and experimented with Ecstasy and “magic mushrooms”. I’d seen firsthand what cocaine and heroin did to people’s lives.
As a charter boat skipper, I’d had to socialize with clients in the evenings, drinking with them, and entertaining them over dinners ashore. I’d turned a blind eye if they wanted to smoke the occasional joint, as long as they didn’t try to bring a stash on board my vessel. The only time I’d ventured into smuggling was a really small-time thing, but terrifying nonetheless. I’d bought some excellent ganja from a Jamaican named Ras Gregory on Jost Van Dyke, and it had been a steal at only $15.00 an ounce. I was flying back to Boston for a few days and decided to take it along. I’d emptied everything metal out of my pockets and flattened the plastic baggie so it was unnoticeable in my pants. When I went through the scanner at the airport in Saint Thomas, another fellow stepped through right behind me, and set the alarm to beeping. I turned to the screener and raised my hands high, saying, “Hey, it was him”, pointing to the tourist behind me in the baggy shorts and print shirt. The slim uniformed screener waved me on, and I headed for my gate with a cold knot in my gut.
I relived that moment as I lay there in our bunk in the Bahamas, thinking about the money we could make for just a few trips transporting bales and bales of the stuff back to Miami. to be continued......
