“Look at this, it’s part of a vacuum cleaner.” Steve, holding up a white, crumpled piece of hard plastic, thin and brittle. “Have you ever read ‘Our Man in Havana'”? The main character, a vacuum cleaner salesman, meets a spy in a bar who soon decides that he is well placed to disclose secrets, and obligingly the protagonist provides the soviets with drawings of vacuum cleaner parts! And that’s how the plot begins…”
We’re back on Sea Dragon tonight, going through the take from a quick afternoon beach cleanup on Stocking Island, one of the barrier islands that form Georgetown Harbor. Bottle caps, plastic bags, miscellaneous tiny shards and fragments, a few juice bottles, straws, lollypop sticks, even a well-worn toothbrush emerge from trash bag. The big mystery of the night is the lid of a cottage cheese tub that Steve identified as being a brand from Ohio – it’s very worn, but that’s only to be expected after such a long journey. Every unidentifiable object is labelled as a vacuum cleaner part – and I’m starting to craft a picture of a bizarre trash-powered vacuum cleaner inside my head, this white pocket where the hose attaches, that thin tube helping to suck out air…
It’s a good end to a long day – we set sail from Great Inagua yesterday morning and have had a beautiful passage, champagne sailing in flat water with beautiful wind under the hot tropical skies, then worked our way in over some shallow sandbars to find anchorage here on the northern edge of the Georgetown harbor. Elizabeth and the crew headed straight to the windward beach on stocking island to do some cleaning and look for inspiration in the rack line, then we settled into a fantastic barbecue at “The Flip Flop Shop,” a collection of crude benches and palm frond canopies near a firepit on the beach – open to all, as long as you only “take what you brought with you.” I’m looking forward to spending another day here exploring the spectacular beaches and bright blue waters of the harbor.
On a more whimsical note, here’s a little piece of a radio broadcast that was written by Steve on Great Inagua:
106.1 Dragonfly radio Bahamas—set your Easter island music on.
When you hear the tune from “The Jolly Boys,” mento music—“Quick in the Tourist,” call our hotline—not-so-hot-today-bringing you radio with the Flamingo hot hot hot Jimi Rooster at the helm. Where slow talk radio has come to die. No, the vacationers are getting younger all the time—oh and you kids take a minute or three to pick up after the messy campers. Scrub pine, little brown round cones–rocky beach outcroppings–run down structures–a yacht in a yard. You think you recover from a hurricane. Remember dobees? Dobees do things good for them—just us good—clean up the island—now hootin-tune in for Bigness–the Album, Wilson and Snopes—make your own din-din. Dine to the blue note trumpet just off the press-debuts at chart heaven-off the coast pirate radio Dragonfly 106.1.
– Captain Eric Loss, S.V. Sea Dragon, Writing at Sea, April 9, 2015