1995: Goats on the boat in the Bahamas with Capt. Robert Kimball

Nov 22, 2018 by Guest Writer

Yachting memories straight from the storyteller: Capt. Bob Kimball

After Hurricane Andrew, our owners wanted to see the damage of Chub Cay, as they were founding family members of the Crown Colony Club, aka Chub Cay. They sponsored a cocktail party for the remaining members in residence, at which the topic of conversation was that there were no goats on the island after the storm.

Well, there were no goats there before the hurricane either.

The missus turned to me and said, “Captain, take care of that.” My response was, “Straight away, ma’am.”

After our guests flew out, the vessel went to Nassau on a goat-hunting expedition. Successful, I may add, by finding a young pair; perfect.

It was a challenge finding a taxi to transport them to the marina for the voyage back to Chub Cay. We were not concerned about the goat hooves on the teak decks, as they were being replaced in short order.

Upon landing back at Chub, I contacted dockmaster Jereth to inform him of the arriving goats. He was smiling from ear to ear, showing more teeth than we knew he had. I made him raise his right hand and promise not to eat the newly arrived goats.

He told me that when I returned back, there would be 40 goats. Our vessel did not go back for six months, and when we did, to our dismay, there were no goats.

Jerreth informed us that one of the goats had choked on some plastic and the other one was lonely, so he sent it to his farm in Andros. Well, I decided a rooster would be his new gift. Off to Nassau on a rooster hunt. A fine specimen, Charlie, was procured and transported back to Chub.

To their dismay, rooster Charlie cleverly chose a tree in the island manager’s yard as his roost so the locals would not mess with him. A year went by and several trips back for us, and we were amazed that Charlie was still crowing early morning tunes.

We decided he was lonely, so back to Nassau for a hen. When the hen arrived, Charlie had feathers flying in short order. Now all can enjoy Capt Bob’s Open Range Chickens. The new owners of Chub are not all that excited about that. On a recent stop in Chub, I related the story to the new dockmaster. He came back with the island manager who  said he would pay our dockage and even pay our fuel – but we had to take the roosters. Ha, I told him, I only brought one.

Topics: