We are seven miles south of Highborne Cay, anchored on the west side of Norman's Cay. Back in the 70's and early 80's this was the base of operations for a cocaine-smuggling drug lord named Carlos Lehder. This guy bought up much of the island's buildings including the marina and airstrip. When he was here his goons would chase away would-be cruisers with guns. It's quite a long story of how he was caught, basically the US pursued him for years and the Bahamian government didn't do too much about him (he owned more than the island, it was thought that he owned several high-ranking officials as well). After dogged pursuit by the DEA, Lehder fled to Medellin, Colombia where he was captured, extradited to the US and is now serving life w/o parole plus 135 years. Anyway, now life on the island is back to normal, but there are a few reminders of his presence.
Probably the most famous is the submerged wreck of a small drug running airplane (a DC-3 maybe?). We dinghied around the south end of the island into the harbor to check it out. It is there resting on the bottom in maybe 6 feet of water. The wings are intact, the tail has fallen over and the fuselage is disintegrating. We were a little disappointed because our guidebook has this great photo of the near-intact plane clearly visible above the surface but the picture must be 20 years old and of course we went to the wreckage at high tide so all we could see above the water was maybe a foot of the fuselage. But the water was clear and we could see the plane submerged as "plane" as day.
The other attraction on Norman's, that I was specifically looking forward to, is a restaurant called MacDuff's that is reported to have the best burgers in the Bahamas. Unfortunately it is under new management and will maybe (?) re-open in November but was definitely closed for business when we went ashore. So tonight I decided to try something. Our friend Jo on Maggie Rose (see SC trip log) recommended some mail-order canned meats. We ordered one can each of pork, beef, and ground beef, just to try it out. We tried the pork a month ago with bbq sauce and it made great pulled pork sandwiches. So tonight I thought I'd try sloppy joes with the ground beef. It was less than spectacular. When I opened the can, Boris immediately started meowing and I can't blame him, the contents did resemble cat food. Once I mixed in the sloppy joe fixings it turned out okay, but since our freezer works really well I think in the future we'll just stick to frozen meat. Anyway it wasn't a total loss, we did have rum drinks while the sun went down. All in all, a pretty good day.
Where we are:
Lat: N 24 35.996'
Long: W 76 49.510'
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