|
Tue, 16 Jan 2001 17:12:43
EST Subject: Cutlass Bay Club/Cat Island To: sandy@cutlass-bay.com
Dear Sandy - My name is XXX and we have
never met. Yesterday I was searching
the Internet for an "Island Rental" opportunity for a family
reunion-vacation sometime in the future. I came across
substantially developed
sites at Darby Island and Musha Cay in the Bahamas and read the
information with great interest because I visited the "Out
Islands" many, many times a long time ago and I often flew over
Darby Island. This caused me
to pull out my most recent edition of Bahamas & Caribbean Pilot's
Guide (I was surprised to discover that I had the 2000 edition) to
look at the exact
location of Darby Island in the Exumas.
Following that, I took a look at Cat Island,
always our favorite destination, and at Cutlass Bay, where our
Bahamas' experiences began, a very long time ago. This led me to
your website and the very
sorry story reported as current events. I will be very interested
in your book when finished. Your story will cover the 10 years you
spent on Cat. Let me give you some perspectives and what I
remember of an earlier time.
My wife and I discovered Cutlass Bay
quite by accident while overflying Cat Island on our way to Stella
Maris on March 3, 1967. The airstrip was not on the
chart and looked new (it was) so we landed to take a look. The
club had been there only a
short time and was being managed by a Canadian couple named Mary Jane
and Bill (Kingsley?). The cook was Mrs. Nottage and Mr. Nottage
was the handyman/etc. The club was apparently owned by a group
including Herb Shriner, a then nationally known comedian. I
remember the taxi driver, Arthur
Bain and "Haus Rebecca" where he took us for a drink.
The airstrip had aviation
fuel for sale, and there was quite a bit of dive equipment and at
least two boats for fishing and water skiing. Things were good!
We enjoyed our two week stay very much
and returned for another week in November
of 1967 (flying logbooks document your life like nothing else) and on
this trip we met Mike Kennedy, a redheaded Irish rough and ready guy
who had apparently built the place. In March of 1968 my wife and
I stopped in Georgetown,
Great Exuma, on our way to Puerto Rico and while having coffee at the
Two Turtles Inn, Bill Kingsley walked in. Quite a shock!
He told us
they had taken over management of a new
club just down the road on Little Exuma,
so we visited for a few days. Not long after that, Bill crashed
in a Skymaster that he
was allegedly flying for the Bahamian Police. This occurred
up north at Mores Island in Abaco. A friend of mine, Fritz
Luddington,
who owned the Two Turtles Inn, later told me that Bill was sporting
many bullet holes in his chest when they brought his body back to
Exuma. Our interests in Cat Island were renewed by the various
stories, so we flew over to
Cutlass Bay for a look. Well, the club was not really open, but
the Nottages were there as was Mike Kennedy and two
architects/contractors from Florida who were building first a small
house and then a large house for Bob Graf, who owned Graf Jets, a
Learjet dealer in Ft Lauderdale, who we later came to know very well.
Our next visit to Cutlass Bay was in
November of 1968. Things were relatively good but somewhat downhill
from our earlier visits and we again returned
in October of 1970. On this visit we met Ron and Jill Bamber who
had built a very nice home
with a few rental rooms at Fernandez Bay. We stayed
with them several times for a few days and for two weeks in November
of 1971. Ron seemed always to be in a feud with a young guy
named Tony Armbrister who
lived next door. Tony seemed somewhat sinister to me. I
got to know his brother well
who was a lawyer in the US. I was trying to buy property
on Cat Island and he was very helpful - fortunately, as the future
unfolded, it was good that I was not
successful with this project.
We returned to Cutlass Bay for our
family Christmas vacation in 1972 and Mike Kennedy and his wife,
Melinda, seemed to be managing the place at that time, but everything
was shrouded in mystery. I offered to buy some land and jointly
finance an extension of the airstrip but the plan never got off the ground
because Mike never followed through on anything. By this time
Hawk's Nest had been
constructed but I do not remember when the airport was built. The
first manager landed his Piper Cherokee on the road prior to the
building of the airport.
While visiting Hawk's Nest we discovered a house then
called"Point House" that was owned by a man named Bob Green
who lived in New Jersey.
We rented that house for two weeks each Christmas for four years, 1975,
'76, '77 and '78. The caretaker's name was Henry Rolle and his
wife Rosibell did the baking
for us. They lived in McQueens, just down the road.
One very stormy evening during our
Christmas vacation of 1978 a very large freighter
appeared on the horizon and to our astonishment entered the harbor at
Hawk's Nest Creek. The opening to the harbor was only about 5
feet wider than the ship!
That night 38 airplanes landed at Hawk's Nest notwithstanding the
fact that the visibility was not more than a mile and the ceiling was
very low also - no navaids, no GPS, no LORAN in aircraft, etc. I
went through the brush to
the edge of the airstrip and an aircraft was being fueled from a drum
using a portable electric pump with a garden hose. There had
been no guests at hawk's Nest, which seemed strange to us. The
next morning it was bright
and clear and I walked down to the dock to see the ship. It was
gone and "Red", the dockmaster told me that a cargo of
lumber and cement had been
unloaded during the night. There was no lumber and cement
to be seen, however. Later that morning 6 unfamiliar men walked
by the Point House carrying
automatic weapons. That was enough for us - we quickly
packed up our things and our children and took off terminating our
vacation a few days early. My logbook shows that date to be
January 6, 1979.
Following that experience, we did not
return to the Bahamas until Christmas of
1984. Cutlass Bay was full, so we stayed at Bob Graf's small
house, just east of the
club. Things seemed strange, although Bob had built a hanger and
had a Cessna 421 and a small
single engine Piper Cub like plane, which we had great fun flying
around the area. Bob basically warned me not to ask any questions
and not to think about building a home on Cat Island.
The last chapter of this story is that
I returned to Hawk's Nest in a
chartered power boat in October of 1986
and spent two nights in the harbor as well as a number of days scuba
diving at Columbus Point, Port Howe, Devil's Point and just to the
west of Hawk's Nest point. I learned that "Red" had been
shot and killed but I could not track Henry Rolle down or learn much
of anything else. I am curious to know what has become of all
these people. Fritz moved on
to Provo and has been dead for some time and Bob Graf dropped dead
in an airport but I know nothing of any of the rest.
Now you know why I am eager to read
your book. I know a lot of Cat Island history
- I even knew Father Jerome!
Once again, I was very unhappy to read
your news. I thought all of the drug problems
would be long past by now and we have been thinking about a trip to
the Bahamas to visit the old haunts. Sounds like that is not a
good idea!
|