1984

Sailing
[play Christopher Cross’s song Sailing]

Julie relaxing in the sun on Alan's sailboat

Arrival at the airport. The ten was customs.

In the summer of ’84 Julie and I received a letter from Alan and Susan who invited us to meet them at one of the smaller Bahama islands.  We had not seen Alan and Susan since we all left Harris, me to go back to contracting, Julie to college and Alan and Susan to take a year to go sailing around the Caribbean in Alan’s sailboat.  The letter invited Julie and I to meet them at some island in the Bahamas and spend a week visiting them there.  They would stay on Alan’s sailboat while Julie and I could stay at the only hotel on the island.  It sounded like a fun thing to do so we wrote back to them to an address at one of the islands they said they would stop to check on their mail.   Upon receiving our letter they called Julie and I from the island and confirmed the dates and we made arrangements.   We drove down to West Palm Beach where we took a flight to Grand Bahama island which is less than an hour fight.  From Grand Bahama we then boarded a small airplane that held less than a dozen people to the small island where we were to meet Alan and Susan. Julie was quite freaked out about the flight, while she had flown many times, it was had always been in large jets and this plane was so small you could not stand up in it.  I had bruises on my arm where she griped it on the short flight.   We arrived safely, well except for the bruises on my arm, and took a taxi to the hotel.  The hotel seem nice nestled among palm trees right on the water.

The Hotel

Julie and I at the bar with band playing

We checked in and went to our room which was quite interesting.  Everything was made of concrete, the night stands next to the bed, the bed base itself, the vanity in the bath, odd but it was a nice room but no air-conditioning but there was a ceiling fan the circled lazily barely moving the hot Caribbean air.   No matter, we would spend most of our time at the pool or out on the water on Alan’s sailboat.  After getting settled in our room we met Alan and Susan at the bar for drinks and then dinner at the hotel restaurant that evening. The food was good but expensive even though it was local caught seafood.  After dinner we went to the bar at the hotel where was a dozen or so other tourists and locals had gathered to listen to a local reggae band.  After listening to the music for a while we turned in early being tired after a long day of travel and Alan and Susan went back to their boat.  Upon arriving at our room we were relieved to find the ceiling fan was going four times faster than it had when we arrived providing a nice flow of air in the room as we turned off the lights.   I woke up later that night all hot and sweaty to find the ceiling fan had returned back to it slow, barely moving air speed.  After inquiring the next day, we found that the fan only went fast when the band was there and they had to run the “big” generator for more power for the band.  When the band wasn’t there, they only ran the small, low power generator.  The next night the band didn’t play and it was a hot miserable night to sleep.

Julie on dock, Alan's sail boar just above her head and Alan in dingy with red sail.

Alan and Susan had anchored their boat a short distance off the hotel dock and had rowed their dingy in to greet us.  The next day Alan and Susan invited us to spend some time out on their boat which sounded nice.  Alan had to take make two trips to take Julie and I out to the boat since the dingy only held two people.  It was fun to be out on the boat where there was a slight breeze blowing and any time we wanted we would jump into the clear blue water to cool off 

View of island  and hotel dock from the Alan's boat

Even so, we had a good time, hanging out around the pool and having drinks the pool side bar. We went out on Alan’s boat one day and just sailed around the island, the clear blue water was most beautiful. On evening Julie and I walked a mile or so to the only restaurant on the island and had steak for dinner which we were shocked at the prices since the steak had to be brought over from Florida.  Everything was more expensive on the island than in the States which came to a head when we went to check out of the hotel to leave.  Upon check out they gave us a bill that was two hundred dollars more than we expected. We expected the expensive dinners at the hotel restaurant, the many drinks, mostly local rum wasn’t all that bad but there were the extra changes we didn’t expect, entry fees, leaving fees, energy fee for the fuel for the generator, all things we were not told about totaling over two hundred dollars.  I argued with the person at the desk about the fees and they did reduce it by a few dollars, but they wouldn’t let us leave with out paying the balance.   Oh well, we had fun, and a coupl hundred dollars more wasn’t all that bad.

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