Abaco After Dorian Thanksgiving Trip

We took off with a full load of supplies for Lubbers late on Friday to avoid some weather coming in from the North. Steve said the plane took off like a pig! I was not overly thrilled with the reference, but it turns out that pigs must fly pretty well. It was a beautiful flight and the sunset over south Georgia was amazing. We stopped in at St. Augustine, Florida for the night to allow us a direct flight to Marsh Harbour the next day. The FBO was very nice and the staff got the plane situated for the night and whisked us away to our Uber that took us to the hotel down south of St. Augustine. The Uber driver that picked us up was passing through from Jacksonville, and delighted us with an eclectic mix of music including “Boots with the fur”. It is always a funny contrast when you go from flying which is very serious business, and I am not going to lie, pretty elite, to the back seat of an Uber where you are a nobody and life just seems to be funny and awkward. It was an entertaining ride, to say the least. We walked from the hotel to dinner at Salt Life, I had a delicious jalapeno margarita and Steve had one of his favorite Florida IPA’s, a Reef Donkey, named after the amberjack, which if you have ever spearfished and shot one, you know where they get their name. It was a relaxing dinner and night and turned out to be a great stopover point to break up the trip.

We got up bright and early to head back to the airport, to preflight the plane and head south to the Bahamas. On our way back to the airport we realized we barely skirted in just as a bicycle road race was going to close the road. We realized this when we saw a million bicyclers at the starting line that was actually on the runway at the airport. Lucky we didn’t get caught in that, it would have made for a very long day.

We arrived in Marsh with Krispy Kreme donuts in hand but Cole pointed out a pile of donuts in the customs office. Who knew! I guess we weren’t the only ones with that idea. Everyone at the airport was overly friendly and positive about the situation. They all eyed our generators though and asked “what were we going to do with those when we left?” We had promised all of our stuff away before we even made it to the ferry. On the taxi ride to Maxwells and the ferry there was only devastation. Huge boats where they shouldn’t be, and piles of rubble everywhere. Although the roads were clear, it was hard to get my bearings, because businesses were hard to recognize or were not there at all. All of Marsh Harbour is crushed, docks are all missing and buildings are no longer along the waterfront. It was a sad sight to see.

Things were a little out of sorts when we arrived but we quickly adjusted to the mayhem. This was my first time to see the house other than the pictures Steve took when he went down for a brief 24hr assessment. It was bad, really bad! I am so happy I didn’t see it in the state he saw it, I think I would have probably just cried. Thankfully, Laurie, Luc and crew made it easier for me to digest what I saw inside. They had cleaned up the sand and debris and placed everything back in a normal position.

We settled in for the night under our super cool amazon ordered bug net (I refused to sleep in the bedrooms until I was able to assess the mold situation). It was kinda cool, I thought, like one of those romantic island get-aways you see in a movie. Little did I know that the mosquitos at Lubbers are smart enough to bounce around until they find a way into the net, gnats there just squirm right through, and it turns out the sleeping bags we have are for 30 below zero, not 75 degrees. Needless to say the next night I decided the bedroom would work just fine with the nice “NoSeeMe” screen (NoSeeMe – name for gnats in the Bahamas) that weathered the storm. Plus, Steve convinced me that just because mold is black does NOT mean it is “Black Mold”. I am still questioning that statement, but I was not sleeping in the open again no matter what! Thank God we moved to the bedroom too, because we woke up the next morning to a mosquito plague. I have never seen so many mosquitos, huge mosquitoes, in one place before. The picture does not do it justice. I am not kidding it was SCARY! The next day the mosquitoes left but the huge gnats showed up in biblical proportions, I mean big fat ones, I have never seen in the Bahamas before. I think Dorian blew them in from Africa or something. They were in our face, our eyes and our food. I know we ate more than our share of protein from gnats and mosquitoes while we were there.

The first order of business the next day was SCREEN, we scratched up every piece we could find and duct taped it to every open hole in the house. There were alot of open how, by the way. Then, we spent the next several days tossing everything into the back yard. I mean everything! Pillows, bedding, sheets, towels, cushions, microwave, and every other small appliance. I tried every single one, hopeful one would work, but no such luck. I would get a light or spark but then smoke. Everything had to go, including the fridge. It’s pretty dishearting seeing all your stuff you worked to get all the way to the island on a plane, a boat, a ferry, all just trash in the yard. I have to stop here though and say. (We are so grateful to have what we have, so many have suffered and lost so much. I can’t even begin to understand what they are going through)

Steve worked hard getting the house straight. We had a significant lean to the north, nothing was square and none of the doors shut. He hooked the whole house up to a tree and a come-along and little by little it moved back to “almost” straight. Scary sight to see, I told everyone it was our new zip line, easy access from upstairs. He rigged up some contraption of a pump on a paddle board floating in the water, anchored to a chair and somehow with a long piece of PVC (and help from Cole), crawled under the house and jetted all the piles back level. He has some mad MacGyver skills, I think he picked up from his Dad.

Meanwhile, Cole held down the fort from the over the water hammock and sucked up the internet data from under the bug net. It’s a sad life he leads…….No really, he did help quite a bit. ;).