Our kids love a beach fire and are always on the lookout for a suitable place to make one.  Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy to find. 

First there are the physical requirements: sand and wood.  Much of the shoreline in the Bahamas is a rocky marl, or “ironshore”.  Not a place you want to land your dinghy.  The island must have trees from which to gather firewood.

It must be near a place we want to park Take Two for the night, and the way back home must be navigable by dinghy at night.  Finally it can’t be inside the Land & Sea Park, or on a private island, and I don’t really want it visible by anyone else at all.  So we’re not exactly overrun with opportunities.

At one point during our trip, we were anchored south of Compass Cay and thought we had found a good location for a beach fire on a neighboring island.  It had been a busy day, and we weren’t planning to move the next day, so we decided to defer the fire.

That night someone was shooting fireworks from the vicinity of the marina on Compass Cay, probably from one of the big fancy yachts in there.  After a long day of zooming around on jetskis, fireworks and loud music are the perfect way to unwind.  The show appeared to be over, but then Sam alerted us that now they were having a bonfire!

Clearly it was no bonfire, but a fireworks-induced brushfire somewhere between us and the marina.  We watched it rage for hours beyond the ridge of the island nearest to us.  The breeze was strong and it was helping the fire spread nicely.  We tried to determine exactly where it was in order to predict the extent of the potential damage, but in the dark it was difficult to tell.  Eventually the fire burned low and we went to bed, expecting evidence of it to be readily apparent the next morning. 

But it wasn’t.  Either by dinghy or by climbing Compass Peak, we could find no trace of the fire, though we could still occasionally get a whiff of it on the wind.  In any case, it seemed that it was no longer the time or the place for beach fires.

A few nights later, near Sampson Cay, the kids finally got their beach fire.