“Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”
-Omar Bradley
Ren and Ashley, smiling despite the beard.
Ashley and I have been on this trip now for over two months and really the only regret I have is passing by places we have yet to explore. It’s easy to have someone tell us “Hey you should go there or here or….” wherever it might be and pass all these wonderful places. The land is one thing but what about what we are missing beneath us? I have been on this lobster kick and for good reason. We don’t really get to eat lobster much back in NC. One of the reasons we came on this trip to begin with was to eat from the sea and here we are passing by an amazingly rich area of seafood only to arrive in a port of overcrowded, overfished areas all for what seems to be a good internet connection or a place where other cruisers will be. Not that this is a bad thing because it’s not. There really is not much better then meeting new people and hearing their stories of how they arrived in the same crowded port and their experiences along the way. But as I look back on it I still think about everything we passed in the night. Every hidden ledge under our keel with an army of lobsters in its crevice. “We will come back to it later” is how we justify it. “We are on a timeline” we mutter. It’s true, we are on a timeline and there is only so much you can see. I guess that is true with life in general. I feel like one of the most important things in life is to see and to meet and to explore as many things and people and places as you can in order to understand and appreciate and even under-appreciate these things. If you have never seen it or experienced it or never met he or she then how can you judge it? I guess you can take another person’s word for it but that is not giving it justice.
As I write this we are anchored in Harbor Island, Eleuthera. Not really my kind of place. A Bahamian island with a Hamptons, NY flare. The super wealthy have ruined it’s small island charm bringing their money and causing prices to rise which in turn has increased crime by the locals probably trying to keep up. It’s kind of not right. Green Turtle Cay is the opposite. No apparent crazy money, no crime, no problem. The funny thing is that they really have no idea how great they have it on Green Turtle. No one is hungry, no one appears to be on drugs…..
However, they are all hoping now that their boat will come in with the “High Class” folks with dollars to spend. “I just wish enough people would come to keep the restaurants in business” says Julie Farrington of Island Properties Management. So where do you draw the line. Unfortunately I think it is inevitable. The ultra wealthy or their extremely fortunate children will arrive and poison it with their over complicated, over ambitious homes and boats and things that really just don’t matter. Along with an attitude of total disregard of those things that do matter. Let me tell you what matters. People matter. The environment matters. If you have to step on any of these things to obtain something, then to me, you don’t matter.
So why do I feel like I’m missing something on this trip? Mainly because I haven’t eaten enough lobster. And here I am, 6 miles as the crow flies, from the commercial lobstering capital of the Caribbean, Spanish Wells. This place is where Red Lobster gets all there crayfish. No wonder I’m striking out. Time to move on down the road to a place where living is more simple and people are more simple and life takes on an old meaning and at the same time a new one. Ashley and I are so very fortunate.
