Tuesday, March 28, 1995 - Mayaguana Island, Bahamas

The wind picked up a little in the morning, and we started dragging anchor towards the beach, so we sailed over to Abraham Bay, which is sheltered by a reef. Roy wanted to go up the bay towards the village, but I was too chicken, so we anchored near the entrance. The chart shows the bay as shallow with lots of coral heads. However, when we paddled to the village, we saw that we could have taken the boat a couple more miles, as the depth remained the same nearly the entire way and there were very few coral heads, which were easy to see. But when we got close to the settlement, we saw a sailboat that had gone aground a long time ago and another one that was stranded on the beach, so I was glad we'd anchored where we did. Besides, it gave us a good excuse for a very nice paddle.
When we got to the village, there was no there there. At least not much. There were a few small houses, a police station, a communications building, and two tiny stores. The streets were unpaved and lined with abandoned vehicles. The people appeared to be very poor. There are roughly 500 to 600 people on the island, most of whom live at Abraham Bay. The rest live at Betsy Bay and Spanish Wells. The people are very pleasant and courteous. They speak English, but with an accent that makes them difficult to understand at times. They appear to be the descendants of slaves, who were taken to the island in the 1700's.
The first tiny store we went into had flour, rice, a few scrawny potatoes, and some canned goods. They didn't have fresh milk, bread, fruit, green vegetables or eggs. The potatoes were $1 a pound!
We went over to the next store. It had a little more, but not much. We paid $2 for a dozen eggs and $1 for a pound of potatoes, but they were better looking potatoes than the ones in the first store. They didn't have anything else that we needed. We can't understand how the people here can afford to pay those prices. There doesn't seem to be any way to earn a living, other than a few government jobs. We didn't see any farms or even vegetable gardens. A few goats and chickens were wandering around. There weren't any commercial fishing boats. How do the people exist? Of course, rent is undoubtedly dirt cheap.
We started back to the boat in a dead calm. The sun set at six o'clock, but we still had half an hour of twilight. Then the boat's masthead light came on, which made an excellent target to paddle towards. We were back on the boat by 7:30.