Conception Island and Cat Island

Leaving Long Island behind, we motored, as we have been doing 95% of our trip this year, to Conception Island, part of the National Park system Conception is a beautiful uninhabited island with coral reefs, white sand beaches and an interesting tidal river. Here we discovered why the breaker to the anchor windless had been shutting down the system. After letting out 85 feet of chain, the windless motor died. Rick spent over an hour diagnosing the malfunction, hoping for a different problem, one we could actually solve. No luck. The shoreline called to us, so we walked the sands and climbed the rocks, through the tanga-tanga (a composite of almost impassable mangrove, ligum vitae, and various other native plants) to see a full view of the island.
Through a cloudy western sky, with oranges and reds on the horizon, we toasted the setting sun with wine and a conch shell greeting.

The conch shell calling must have worked because the day dawned with sunshine. Rick hauled aboard the 85 feet of chain, using a pelican hook tied to a cleat to rest between pulls. With 10 knot north easterly winds, we set sail for Cat Island.

There we find The Hermitage, a retirement home for Father Jerome, a remarkable man, an architect, turned Anglican priest/mule team driver/horse breeder/Catholic priest/monk. He built churches and a monastery throughout the Bahamas, lovely stone monuments to God.  Amazingly, Father Jerome built The Hermitage, his retirement home, in 1937 and lived in it until his death 17 years later. He had all he needed here, a living area with a single stone chair, a bedroom cell, a kitchen with a table for one, a washing area under a porch roof, a small chapel with a bell tower. He built a cistern, a garden wall, and climbing the last 50 feet of the 200 foot hill, he carved the stations of the cross into large stones.

There are also the ruins of a plantation estate from the 1700s.

Farming is done, Bahamian style on Cat Island. The tanga tanga foliage is cleared out by pruning back to the thick woody stems. One would think nothing could grow in the rocky rubble that is left, but at the base of the cut back bushes and plants, where the soil is held together by the old root systems, seeds are planted. We saw corn, squash, bean vines, banana trees, and mangoes growing in a field of stones and encompassing several acres, a tough way to farm.