Driving To The Beach

Amelia has become very good at driving our dingy (which we have named "Dipity"). Last week she motored us through the Lucaya canals on Grand Bahama Island and out an ocean inlet. Just outside the inlet, we drove to a beautiful white-sand beach where we swam and played in the surf with friends. The dingy is our "car" for getting around and exploring whenever the boat is at anchor or in a marina.

Lucaya has an extensive network of deep-water canals that were dug into the limestone structure of the island to provide inland boat access to resorts and home sites. Several inlets connect the canals to the ocean. While exploring in our dingy, we have been surprised by the amount of vacant land adjacent to these canals. In many places, it appears that these vacant sites once had houses or resorts, which appear to have been damaged and abandoned or destroyed by hurricanes in years past. Given the low utilization rate in the marinas that we have visited, current economics don't appear to justify intensive building (or re-building) efforts on these sites. While we look at these vacant sites, we also see newly-developed single-family-home lots in other island locations for sale at over $1 million dollars per lot (house construction extra). There is clearly something about the local economy that we don't understand.

In the little resort marina where we are currently docked, there is a newly constructed home for sale for $12 million. It has an unusual boathouse design, where the ground floor is a boathouse allowing a Hinckley Picnic Boat (included in the price) to enter and be lifted to the second floor where it can be admired from the living quarters. A separate guesthouse/caretaker's cottage is also included. The home is cute but if we had an extra $12 million to spend (and we don't, having recently spent our last 12 extra large on boat parts), I think we would look for our own island. In doing so, we would follow in the footsteps of local celebrities, including Johnny Depp, who are recent Bahamas island buyers. So, I guess there really are pirates in the Caribbean...