Three colours, turquoise, white and green
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Mon 23 May 2011 16:48
|
"Shortly, I shall have a beer," announced the
skipper. "Indeed you shall, my dear," replied Alex, who no longer raises an
eyebrow at a midday refreshment. In fact, she has moved from mild
disapproval to complicity in that she takes a swig as she passes me a bottle of
Sands ("Truly Bahamian Beer")
Today, I want to talk about colours. Colours are
what this part of the world is all about: the colours of fish, of coral and the
million subtle shades of the sea. This morning, for example: After an hour or so
spent dismantling the outboard, cleaning and reassembling, we buzzed over to a
mushroom shaped island which contains the Thunderball Cave. The day is a trifle
overcast and there is a good wind blowing, so it's not as hot as usual (indeed,
at 27 degrees C, Alex has just declared it cold and put an extra top on).
Sliding into the water with snorkels and masks, we were faced with an
astonishing array of corals which glowed deep mauve and fluorescent orange
in the sun. The cave itself has a sluicing tide running through it and is
open at the top, where the limestone has eroded through above. In a rare moment
of sunshine, rays poured down into the cave, illuminating it with a breathtaking
turquoise light that reflected off hundreds of fish. Many of these beasts were
the little yellow, black and white stripy affairs that I believe to be related
to piranhas. They know no fear and crowd around swimmers, hoping for some food.
In the Bay of Pigs, these very same fish took an audible bite out of my hair and
one had an uncomfortable chew on my toe.
Turquoise really is the dominant theme here. Our
guide talks at length about the meaning of different colours of water, from
white (aground on sand just centimetres below the surface) to yellow (aground on
sand or rock a few feet below the surface) and radiant turquoise, which
signifies water so clear it seems less substantial than air over a sandy
bottom between three and 10 feet deep. Milk white is the colour of the
coral sand on the beaches and green is the carpet of cactus and mangrove scrub
that lies over the low, low cays. The camera doesn't really do any of these
colours justice. You need to be wearing sunglasses to cut out the glare. The
whole resembles the Grenadines viewed through a polarising filter.
Tonight we'll head in to the marina at Staniel Cay
again for a drink while the sun sets. Last night, the shallow water around the
pontoons were lit by the underwater lights of half a dozen monstrous motorboats.
The crisp, black forms of large nurse sharks were visible everywhere as they lay
on the bottom snoozing. Luckily, they eat only molluscs and crustaceans and
would not take much interest in a drowning yachtsmen. We met a couple of
Americans who had sailed over from Florida, and told us a familiar story about
birds hitching a ride on the boat as they crossed the great, shallow expanse of
the Bahamas Bank. "Sad thing is, I think we killed him," the guy told us
regretfully. "We put on the aircon and he froze to
death."
|