The Bataan Death March, or Sir Galahad saves the day?

We stopped at Little Farmers Cay for a few days on our way north.  We had lunch at the Farmers Cay Yacht Club, and we were the only customers.  The owner, Roosevelt Nixon, sat with us and told us the history of the Cay and its inhabitants.  It was like we were at Melvin’s…  Like Melvin, Roosevelt is garrulous and informative.  His great grandfather was a loyalist who left the newly formed United States, for Georgetown in the Exumas, still in the hands of Great Britain.    They attempted to farm cotton, but due to the lack of soil, failed at that.  Apparently four of the Loyalists married four slave sisters when Britain abolished slavery( including his grandfather), and the four couples moved to Little Farmers Cay, which has a protected harbor, and it became one of the largest towns in the Exumas north of Georgetown.   However, as tourism came to Staniel Cay, it became the source of employment and many younger people left Little Farmers, but civic pride is clearly evident in the 90 current residents.  Roosevelt retired after living on Nassau and returned to Little Farmers to build the yacht club on his family’s land, and is trying to bring tourism dollars to Little Farmers.  Roosevelt is the type of citizen who can makes thing happen, and things bode well for Little Farmers Cay.   What does any of this have to do with Bataan you ask?   Well, Roosevelt mentioned he owned a stretch of Guana Cay across the harbor, and there was a trail over to a secluded beach on the Atlantic side full of shells.  Alexis could hardly sleep thinking about the shelling opportunities that awaited.  The trail was several miles long over a hill, and was somewhat hard core.  There were only three markers, a shoe on a bush, a flip flop on a bush, and a crab trap float.  Well we made it to the Atlantic, and Alexis shelled to her heart’s content.  Ten minutes of shelling is my max, so I headed back to the bay side to explore the beach and some abandoned cabins there.  About an hour later I received a Mayday call on the VHF.  Alexis was lost and trapped in a thicket somewhere on the island.  She missed the flip flop.   Naturally the entire boating community listened to her pleas, and me calmly asking her to describe where she was.  By the coconut tree she said.  Well there are several.  In any event her knight in shining armor rescued her, and all ended well, except for several cuts and scrapes from the dam thicket she wandered into, but knights don’t complain or boast about their chivalrous acts…..

Yacht club.

The path.

Despite what Bill says, the savant strikes again!

Kicking Atlantic.