Seaspray Resort at Elbow Cay

Cold Front - what it means …

First there are a couple of days of clear skies and sunny weather. The sunlit ocean glitters like turquoise fabric. It feels like it's going to be lovely forever. Then the winds begin to kick up. Sand gets into your eyes and teeth if you walk the beach. The palm trees, instead of being full and round on top all make fans far to one side. The gentle rustling of their fronds takes on a more frantic sound. The boat creaks on her lines and we check for chafing before we go to bed. The east wind has picked up from about 20 knots to 40 and has clocked around to the south and west. Along the horizon, lightening punctuates the starry night. Half asleep, we check the lines again, hoping none of the dozen ropes that tie us securely to the dock will let go. Maybe it is the rain coming through the hatch over the bed that wakes us and we make a circuit inside the boat, closing anything that is open and putting towels under the old hatches that leak.
Daylight comes. The sky has turned gray with occasional patches of blue. The front is passing but it drags behind it the cold. The temperature has dropped about 20 degrees. Yesterday's sleeveless t-shirt is traded for long sleeves with a sweatshirt over that. Only Lew still wears shorts, Florrie is back in blue jeans. Today is for staying snug and warm inside, at least until the front passes and the post card weather returns.

Only yesterday we walked the beach under the cliffs and found many of nature's treasures. Limpets almost as big as the palm of your hand chew their way into the rugged limestone rocks. The surprise was that limpets have "feet", hundreds of them, making a fringe like a feather boa all around their single shell. Small gray crabs scurry along the rocks as the tide brings in new morsels to eat. Snails scatter all over the rocks and in the tide pools, looking like marbles from a distance.

Most of the rocks are jagged and treacherous. No boater wants to run aground on that. Over the decades and centuries, the tides wear the rocks into washboard-like ripples. One area of the beach has been worn down into that kind of hard pan which is also treacherous because it is so slippery. The tide washes around the rocks, making pools that flow back and forth with the current. Bubbly seaweed with little leaves breaks off from somewhere in the deep and floats in the shallows. Sunlight glitters on the droplets of water carried by the weeds, making tiny prisms that focus brilliant "stars" on the sandy bottom. The small ripples of the current make a pattern of light like the texture of the eroded hardpan. Everywhere there is a soft pink cast to the sand, evidence of the crushed red coral that the relentless waves bring to the shore.