Day 973 I have been to Marsh Harbor

Day 973 I have been to Marsh Harbor

Thursday September 5, 2019

426 Days until the 2020 election and 508 days until the Inauguration

It was 2009. My friend Jim said he was selling his sail boat but he wanted to take it on one last trip. I went with my son, Alex, down to Florida where Jim had outfitted the boat. We sailed across the Gulf Stream to the Northern Bahamas. The Northern Bahamas lay out in a horizontal curve from Florida. You can go from around Palm Beach over to them. There are a series of anchorages in cays well known to sailors. After crossing the Gulf Stream you are pretty well protected from the open ocean and you can duck in and out of the islands, anchoring along the way until you get to Marsh Harbor. It’s the big town along the way. 

Our plan had been to sail with Alex to Marsh Harbor, then Shelby was going to come into Marsh Harbor and Alex was going to fly home. Shelby would be with us for a week or six days and then she would fly home and we’d take the boat down to the Berry Islands, which are rather uninhabited and pristine.

It’s not quite the way it worked out. We never made the Berries. Jim’s auto-pilot sailing tiller stopped working so we decided after dropping Shelby to sail for Florida. All of Florida was in the grip of terrible thunder storms. We sat behind a spit of protected land for three days and finally made a run for it across the Gulf Stream in twenty-one foot waves. In the middle of our run at night we got caught in a thunder storm. If you’ve ever seen that movie with Robert deNiro as the devil that inhabits people’s bodies then you know what kind of weather we were having. (Cape Fear? Or was it Al Pacino? I don’t know. I get them mixed up.) Big lightning. White, bright, as the boat rolled up the side of one wave and down the other side. 

But what I wanted to tell you about was the drop off and pick up.

Alex, Jim and I got to the Marsh Harbor airport before Shelby’s flight arrived.

It’s not a big place, one runway behind a chain link fence. Small terminal building, probably two gates. By that I mean one set of double doors with the right door being Gate 1, and the left being Gate 2 with a set of movie stanchions and red velvet rope dividing the two gates.

Picture this – A small plane lands. People get out. They form a line going toward the terminal building. They are slightly back lit. Jim, Alex, and I are on the other side of the chain link fence. We see Shelby. We start yelling. “Hey! Over here! Hi!” 

She puts her head down trying to ignore us. The woman in front of her is trundling a little rolling suit case. We see that woman stop, turn back toward Shelby and say something. We see Shelby acknowledge what ever this woman said by nodding her head up and down. The woman shakes her head from side to side  and continues toward the terminal building.

Poor Shelby.

Alex has to leave to make his flight, which is the same plane Shelby just came in on. The turn around is so quick that he and Shelby only get to wave to each other as he is now on the tarmac and she is on the other side of the chain link fence with Jim and myself. The plane takes off and we take Shelby to the burger and beer place at the entrance to the air port. There’s no point in trying to leave because traffic will be backed up on the small road leading into the airport from the twenty or so folks who got off the plane and meet their rides.

That airport is now under five feet of water. The burger joint? It was made of plywood and T-111 siding. I don’t think much is left of it after 220 mile an hour winds hit there.

We need to help our neighbors. Send money.

426 Days until the 2020 election and 508 days until the Inauguration

PS Wally’s – Marsh Harbor, Lowe’s Food Store – Green Turtle Cay, Nipper’s – Great Guana Cay