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Bahamian Rhapsody (cont.)

Butter-fried Spam and eggs. Brian proudly serves me a plateful of the toasted fat ingots, and they're not bad, really. The little curly-tailed lizards scurrying about camp, bravely nipping our toes, could not be happier with the scraps. As reckless about sun exposure (he's the tannest man alive) as he is about diet, Brian is gloating in a kind of early retirement. At 35, he's already built and sold a profitable direct-mail company. "My constant trips to the Bahamas were beginning to irritate my wife, so I started Sail Exuma to justify my playtime," he says. "Now I sail and make money. Who can argue with that?"

On Brian's eight-day standard trip up the Exuma Cays, participants sail in a flotilla, two to a Sea Pearl, with Brian leading the way in a high-powered tender. As we sip instant coffee and scrutinize the charts, we discuss alternate routes through the Jumentos. Man-of-War Cut—a brutal, three-mile stretch of open water and the only cut in the entire chain to have earned itself a name—lies five miles to the south. With the wind blowing a steady ten knots, we opt for a day sail instead of risking a crossing. The gear-free Arawak is fast and nimble on one long, high-speed reach to Man-of-War Cay, where we peek across the whitecaps to Jamaica Cay.

"There's no way I'd take clients across this without a safety boat," Brian says. "If anyone freaked, I could just tie off their boat and drag them across."

Back at Flamingo, low tide has exposed deep undercuts below the cliffs, making the massif look like a giant mushroom, and we don our snorkel gear for closer inspection. We're amazed to discover a cave that reaches some 30 yards into the rock. It's big enough to stand up in, and in several places, sky has breached the porous limestone, lighting piles of conch shells and wave-packed sand. Brian swims off to spear dinner, and I reenter the water and continue my ogling. The reef fish, fantastic corals, and helmet conchs are so colorful they look fake.

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