Lee Stocking Island

For breakfast we have French-Toast made with our coconut bread, excellent.

Late morning we head south to Lee Stocking Island. The northern half of the Island hosted the CMRC, Caribbean Marine Research Center, which was created by the Perry Institute for Marine Sciences by in 1984 to address environmental degradation and other marine problems. John Perry who recently died at 89 owned a number of newspapers in Florida and the Bahamas, became interested in oceanography and created the Perry Institute after selling a number of his newspapers. In recent years NOAA funded the center as part of its funding for Pacific and Atlantic ocean research. Around 2009 the two chairmen in control of funding, Senator Ted (“bridge to no where”) Stevens of Alaska and Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii decided to pull all the NOAA funding to the Pacific where their states coincidentally are. The center quickly closed. Many cruisers who stopped to visit shortly after said it looked like the researchers were given and hour to pack and leave. All the equipment was left in place. Even today there are still old computers in some offices. Most of the place is slowly falling apart from lack of maintenance.

We take the dinghy to a beach on the south side of the island to climb Perry Peak, the highest spot in the Exumas. 

 

Climbing Perry's Peak

When we pull up onto the beach we meet a kayaker, who we assume was from one of the nearby sailboats. 

Sarah the adventurer

Sarah and Linda

Turns out the kayaker Sarah Marley, from Kokomo, Indiana, is traveling on the smallest cruising “yacht” around. She has been out for 5 days solo or so traveling in the southern Exumas, camping on beaches, carrying all her water. Her legs are covered in mosquito bites, from her last campsite. After we come back down from our “mountain” climb we invite her to have dinner with us on the boat, a fresh water shower and spend the night, sleeping in our aft cabin. Linda has various creams and stuff to help her with the bug bites. Sarah enjoyed dinner and a rum & coke on ice after 5 days of freeze dried food and protein bars. Sarah is a very interesting young woman, about to graduate for the second time from college, but this time in computer programming management and has a job lined up in Austin, Texas, after she graduates. She is now on her spring break adventure, one of her many travel adventures that must drive her mother nuts.

Another warm night on the boat, fans run all night. Quite an improvement from being cold in Nassau.