Heading yonder from Over Yonder. It’s hard to leave.

It’s Monday morning and it looks like it’s time to move on from Over Yonder Cay where we have been for several days. Ethan has been a terrific host during our stay and has made us feel welcome and very much at home.

This island, very much the vision of Ed, the owner, is a really remarkable island and I now have a much better feel for the complexity of what went in to developing it and in keeping a place like this running smoothly. About 20 of the 30 employees that are working here on any given day are brought to the island from nearby Black Point Settlement by Ethan who shoves off from the marina dock at about 6:30 to make the hour round trip and then takes them back at the end of the day.

Along with the day to day trimming of plantings and general cleaning on the island, there are constant upgrades to infrastructure equipment.

I can’t imagine how complicated it is for Ethan and the staff to keep up with everything but they do. In just the last few weeks, the solar system was upgraded and a new reverse osmosis plant was put into operation, just to mention two large projects.

Ethan was kind enough to share some construction photos with me that give a pretty good idea of the scale of what went into putting this facility together.

This photo is from early in the construction process when there wasn’t much on the island. The round cut in the top center was the beginning of the dredging of the harbor, carved out of solid limestone. It’s a lot different now.
Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, had to be brought in by water including really heavy stuff like this tractor. And, when it breaks, and yes, everything breaks in this harsh environment, Ethan had to find a way to fix it “in the bush”. No simple feat. I am sure that Ethan would agree that when it comes to keeping a remote island running smoothly, “it’s always something” as Gilda Radner’s character Roseanne Roseanadana once famously said.
Where there are now perfect paths made of millions of cement pavers, there was nothing but sand.
The beginnings of a totally “green” island. If they didn’t have the solar and wind farms, the cost keep the lights on would be in the millions of dollars per year in fuel alone. And that doesn’t even take into account the carbon footprint of an island powered by diesel generators. Not many islands in the Bahamas have embraced alternative energy but they should as it just makes sense. Unlike most construction in the Bahamas that is primarily cement, the buildings here are primarily of frame construction. Just getting enough skilled labor to put up these very complex structures must have been a daunting. When Brenda and I were here for our last visit two years ago, Ethan gave us a half day tour of every inch of the island. I wrote about it in this post. It’s worth checking out to see just how far they have come in creating a near perfect oasis “over yonder” in the Bahamas.