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Bahamian Rhapsody (cont.)

The Atlantic Ocean, the Great Bahama Bank, the fickle rain—water rules these latitudes, the land a mere afterthought, but after 15 hours on the mariner's equivalent of a bucking bull, I step ashore on a small, unnamed cay and kiss the ground like a pagan at Stonehenge. Seabirds peep and swoop at my head, protecting their nests, and a nearby blowhole wumps! at odd intervals. A little speck of an island, our first landfall in the Jumentos turns out to be typical for the chain. The limestone ground a few steps from the beach is yellow and diamond-sharp, textured with nooks and crannies like an English muffin. I'm amazed that the creepy, ice plant–looking flora can scratch out a life here, but much of the island is covered with low, pale greenery.

The Jumento Cays are a forgotten group of islands rimming the southern edge of the 330-mile-long Great Bahama Bank in a hundred-mile arc. Only the southernmost island of the chain, Ragged Island, is inhabited (about 40 people live there). From north to south, the islands get progressively bigger, starting as basketball court–size and growing to a square mile or two; they're separated by stretches of water ranging from a few yards to a few miles at the southern end. Four times a day, the tide rips through these "cuts," either dumping off the Bank or pouring in from the ocean.

What makes them so treacherous is that within three miles of the Bank's edge, the depth changes from 25 feet to more than a mile, creating powerful tidal surges often at odds with the wind. The Arawak's leeboards and retractable rudder enable us to sail over reefs on the protected Bank side, drawing only eight inches in a pinch, but our small size also makes us vulnerable to the confused seas. At times, sailing the Jumentos is an exercise akin to avoiding the flush of an immense toilet.

With these facts in mind, we pull the charts out of our drybags and decide to shoot for Flamingo Cay. It's 12 miles away, but its size ensures good anchorage. Late in the day, we round a point on Flamingo's rocky, leeward coast and come upon a beach, our beach, in a small bay framed by 50-foot limestone cliffs above a thin ribbon of sand. I set up Brian's Day-Glo orange tent; he organizes the kitchen and anchors the Arawak offshore. While taking a swim in the blue-gray water at dusk, we spot a large male lobster hiding in a coral head not 20 yards from our tent. Ever the carnivore, Brian spears it, cleans it, and then boils it in seawater. Muddling in the dark, we chow it down along with some soupy pasta.

At midnight, a torrential downpour, a real tropical pounding, wakes me up and reminds me that we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer the night before. And that during the past 30 hours of controlled chaos, I had tackled the seas, seen a drug runner's airplane decomposing on a beach, poked around an encampment left by Haitian refugees, and startled a majestic loggerhead turtle sunning herself in the waves.

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