The sun sparkles golden flecks on a rippling sea like a spot-light on stage. The sea, as calm as it is deceptive, lines the brilliant sandy coast for miles. Its dazzling beauty this morning is the main event. If you take to High Rock’s Emmanuel Way, the spotted road that runs along the water, the road eventually tapers down to a tranquil cove of seaside buildings.
The white structures trimmed in aqua make up Bishop’s Beach Club and Resort. The Beach Club has contentedly occupied the same spot since 1981. Its neighbour, the seven room cozy strip of lodgings that is the resort, came about six years ago when guests enchanted by the serenity of the beach club repeatedly urged the proprietor, Reuben Roberts, to build them a place to spend the nights.
“We have the best seafood in the world,” Mr. Roberts, 65, declares proudly of the beach club. “No place will do it like Bishop’s,” he smiles broadly.
In the pre-hurricane months, the warm white sands of the beach had gently nudged the asphalt parking lot and cushioned the Big Boys Bar,” a wooden gazebo outfit fitted with a bar that has hundreds of smooth pebbles embedded in its surface. After the thrashing that parts of the island received from Hurricane Wilma last week, deracinated streams of sand now shimmer about 200 feet inland nearly swamping the beach club. The waters that brought the sand, Mr Roberts says, rushed another few hundred feet further onto the premises the day Wilma struck the shores.
“It was devastating. Waves rushing and rising across. It never happened like that before,” Mr Roberts, who lives on the property reports.
It was the worst hurricane he has seen in the more than two decades since he set up business at the site even though last year’s storms knocked out anewly constructed sea wall below the club and resort.As with many other buildings on Grand Bahama, Hurricane Wilma also pried shingles from the club and resort’s rooftops. The ocean, stirred up by powerful winds, fragmented the paved parking lot like broken shards of glass.
Mr Roberts hopes, of course, to have the resort and beach club up and running again as soon as possible.
But for now, there is no running water and a generator hums noisily against the backdrop of a clear blue sky in the place of electricity.
He estimates that the total clean-up and repairs could cost thousands. The proprietor has already begun to repair, pecking away with the seven employees on staff.
Regulars have already called since the storm concerned about how the resort fared and wanting to book rooms for the up-coming winter season. In spite of electrical damage to appliances, among the other items at the resort in need of repair after Wilma, Mr Roberts remains confident that his expectant winter guests can soon return to this peaceful seaside home away from home.
By: THEA RUTHERFORD, The Freeport News
