“So the diving is really good here, huh?”
“Bahamas best diving in de world, mon, and Cay Sal best in de Bahamas. Fish in dat place not afraid because most of dem nevah see a mon before.”
When the sun did come up, Cuba was no longer in sight to the south and the only visible land was a sliver of a low-lying cay of rock and sand roughly three miles ahead. The transition from the ocean to the edge of the bank was marked by a dramatic change in water color, from deep indigo blue to transparent aquamarine green through which Artie could see every detail of the sand bottom 20 feet below. The water over the bank was impossibly clear, the underwater visibility far exceeding even that around the coral reefs of Isleta Palominito. When they passed over an isolated patch of coral formations that reached to within 10 feet of the surface, Artie could clearly see that it was teeming with a dazzling array of tropical fish. A large black-tip shark darted away at right angles to their course as the catamaran’s twin bows passing overhead startled it. Larry was clearly excited to be here, and had come on deck to eagerly scan the line of cays ahead with his binoculars.
“Where are we going to anchor, near the island?” Artie asked.
“No, just past it, off the north end, on the edge of the banks. There’s an extensive patch of reef there you won’t believe, huge elkhorn and brain coral formations, lots of deep crevices and canyons, all in about 30 feet of water. It’s thick with big grouper and yellowtails. We can clean up there in short order. Damn, I just wish I could dive!”
“Sorry, little brother, but you’re going to have to sit this one out—doctor’s orders. I’d like to try it myself, but I don’t know after seeing the size of that shark back there.”
“Plenty shark,” Scully said, as he steered them closer to the cays, “but not to worry too much. Best t’ing is to spear de fish and get dem on de boat quick.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea, diving in shark-infested waters and then calling the sharks to dinner by poking bloody holes in a bunch of fish!”
“They don’t usually mess with you if you don’t hang around too long,” Larry said. “Like Scully said, as soon as you spear a fish, get it out of the water as fast as possible to minimize the blood.”
Artie was still skeptical a half hour later, when, anchored over the reef, he put on a mask and snorkel and sat on the edge of the deck with a pair of fins. Scully was already in the water, and Artie could see him free-diving effortlessly into the winding and convoluted canyons between the coral, his dreadlocks streaming behind him as he cruised 20 feet below, with his speargun at ready.
By the time Artie was in the water, still swimming by the boat and looking around beneath the surface with his mask, Scully was on the way back to the boat with a two-and-a-half-foot long, heavy-bodied fish impaled on his spear. Artie found out later it was a Nassau grouper, a reef fish much sought after in the Bahamas that is much more scarce near the populated islands. The Anguilla Cays were so far from the rest of the Bahamian islands they may as well have been in another country, and from what Artie could see as he snorkeled along the surface, Larry had not been exaggerating about the possibilities for stocking the boat with fresh fish. The only problem was that, for Artie, handling the awkward Hawaiian sling spear gun underwater was difficult enough, on top of the fact that to get within range of the fish, it was necessary to hold your breath and swim down to at least 15 feet or deeper to reach the coral. Artie had little experience using the snorkeling gear, and even less free-diving to any depth. By the time he got close enough to start looking for potential prey, he invariably felt the need to return to the surface for air. When he did get a shot at a grouper, the stainless-steel spear missed by a wide margin and went into a patch of sand on the bottom, a good 25 feet deep. He tried twice to reach it, each time having to abandon the attempt and lunge for the surface for another breath before he could reach the bottom. Finally, Scully came to his rescue and got the spear. By this time, Scully already had more than a half-dozen fish on the decks of the
“Sorry, little brother, but I guess we would starve to death if we were dependent upon my abilities as a hunter.”
“That’s all right, Doc. It takes practice. You’ll get your chance again.”
Artie marveled at the array of fish Scully had lain out on the teak slats of the forward deck. When he finally came aboard and took off his gear, he had one last prize—a huge spiny lobster, which he held up for Larry with a grin.
“You’re the man, Scully!” Larry was ecstatic about the lobster. “Scully won’t eat lobster,” he explained to Artie. “But he got one for us, since I couldn’t do it myself.”
“Dat’s not I-tal, mon,” he said when Artie asked if he did not like lobster. “A Rasta don’t to eat dem lobstah, crab and animal like dat—only fish. But if I an’ I got not’ing to eat, not to worry ’bout dat, gonna eat dem too.”
“Well, too bad for you, Scully, but the Doc and I are going to have lobster tail for breakfast, so we need to get going.” He said to Artie, “I told you this place would be worth a short stop, didn’t I?”
An hour and a half later, with drying fillets of fish spread out on the decks, they were underway again on a broad reach, sailing over the smooth waters of the banks just inside the reefs that break up the swell from the open ocean. This was some of the best sailing of the whole trip, the wide, stable form of the catamaran gliding over a transparent sheet of smooth crystalline water that stretched as far as they could see over the shallow, sandy bottom of Cay Sal Bank.
They were approaching the Damas Cays, the next islets north of the Anguillas on the rim of the atoll, when Scully spotted a sail out on the banks to the southwest. Closer inspection through Larry’s binoculars, which they all passed around for a better look, revealed that it was not just a single sail, but rather a two-masted schooner. It didn’t take long to ascertain that the distant vessel was coming their way, and Larry said it appeared to have adjusted course to intercept them if they continued on their present heading.
“Who do you think they could be?” Artie asked.
“It’s still too far away to tell, but it doesn’t look like your typical cruising yacht to me,” Larry said. “I’d say it’s over 60 feet, and probably built somewhere in the islands.”
“Could be dem Cuban, mon.”
“You’re right, Scully. Or Haitian. Or from the west, maybe Honduras or Belize. It’s been long enough now since the pulse that people who are able are probably starting to get on the move. There’s just no telling, but I don’t like the looks of this. Let’s bear off and get all the speed we can out of these sails while I look at the charts. There are some dangerous shoals just to the south of those cays ahead.”
Scully eased the genoa sheet and adjusted the mainsheet traveler to leeward. They were on a broad reach, which was generally a faster point of sail on a catamaran than a dead downwind run. The morning breeze had been light while they were anchored over the reef, but now, as it was getting toward noon, the trade winds had freshened to 15 knots again. Artie glanced at the distant schooner and then at the wake behind their twin sterns. At its fastest speeds, the Tiki 36 created quite a bit of turbulence astern, and Larry estimated they were hitting 16 or 17 knots. The schooner wouldn’t be able catch them in an even race, no matter how much sail they piled on, but it had an angle advantage on them in relation to the wind, and it appeared it would intersect their course if they continued to the northwest inside the reefs of the bank. Artie could tell that Larry and Scully were both getting nervous about the situation, and he felt knots in his stomach thinking about the attack at Isleta Palominito.
“I don’t like this,” Larry said, as he stared at the schooner through his binoculars. “They’ve adjusted their course again to account for our increased speed, and it looks like they’re trying to cut us off before we can reach the north end of the bank.”
“What can we do?” Artie asked.
“First of all, you can get my shotgun and bring it up on deck. There’s a couple of extra boxes of buckshot and slugs in the locker under the chart table.”
This was the last thing Artie wanted to hear. The thought of having to use the gun again twisted the knots in his stomach even tighter. “How do we know what their intentions are?”
Larry handed him the binoculars. “Take a look. It’s definitely not a family cruiser or vacation charter boat.”
The schooner was now within a mile of the
