Picking Up Trash in Great Harbor Cay

White Pepper spent Tuesday morning helping to pick up trash in the Great Harbor Cay Marina and along the road to the beach. One of the ladies along with Hans, the harbor master, organized the affair.

Twenty of the boater met at 9 am. We represented almost all of the able bodied sailors in the marina that day. We divided into teams and set to work battling brush, small (harmless) snakes, and worst of all – poison wood. Poison wood is Bahama's version of poison ivy. The snakes are boas about 12 to 18 inches long and can not even bite.

Jan and I were assigned the section at the beach end of the road about a mile from the marina. We shared the duty Glenn and Dorothy from Dot's Way. During the work I came to a profound realization. The responsible Bahamian (or more likely a visitor to Great Harbor Cay) throws his empty beer bottle deep into the brush along side of the road. The irresponsible Bahamian or visitor just flips it aside. The responsible beer drinker, however, causes much more grief in clean up. This is because it is much harder to dig into the deep brush to retrieve trash and beer bottles.

The effort took about 2 hours. All of us filled up 36 of the large black trash bags. A nice older Bahamian in a small red pick up stopped and helped haul the bags to the dump. Before noon we were all done and feeling very good about the effort. Then off to the showers to clean up the scratches and wash off the poison wood oil.