In 1960, when I was six years old, my family moved from western New York State to Florida. My dad had recently completed a BS degree in mathematics and was searching for a job. My parents chose Florida for the job search because of the climate. After interviewing for jobs on both the east and west coasts of Florida my dad accepted a position at RCA near Patrick Air Force Base, south of Cape Canaveral. He worked in data reduction, taking the huge volumes of data regarding the trajectories of military ballistic missiles and reducing them to more manageable levels. I consulted with my brother, Dave, about our dad’s work and he said it took them a month to reduce the data from a single launch. In the late 1950’s the Air Force built the Eastern Test Range; comprised of twelve down-range tracking stations—one of which was on Grand Bahama, another was on Eleuthera. George and I happen to be anchored in Alabaster Bay, which is very close to the ruins of the AAFB (auxiliary Air Force base) where the Eleuthera tracking station was located. I have a memory of my dad taking a business trip to one or more of the stations and I also have a memory that he visited Eleuthera. I once asked him about visiting Eleuthera after we started sailing to the Bahamas, but he couldn’t remember at that point in his life. Nevertheless, I was interested in walking through the ruins of the AAFB since my dad may have also been here 60 odd years ago. We visited ruins on the west side of the island yesterday and today we visited the much larger area on the east side. The base was abandoned decades ago and there isn’t much left but we still found it interesting. When cleaning out my mom’s house five years ago we came across a box of slides that included unlabeled photos of my dad’s trip. We tried to see if anything we saw yesterday or today matched Dad’s photos but saw no resemblance. If you are interested in reading more about the AAFB, and also the Navy Facility (NAVFAC) located on the same property you can click the link below.
Housing, with a yellow crowned night heron on the window sill.
We saw this very large area on the side of an incline covered in concrete and wondered what it was. We learned that it was a water catchment area.
Part of the same water catchment area.
This building held the chapel and housing.
After we left Ten Bay yesterday morning we stopped at South Palmetto Point so we could walk to Eleuthera Island Farm where I bought as many greens as our refrigerator would hold. Next, we continued on to Alabaster Bay which has been a beautiful, calm, quiet anchorage.
Guardhouse near the entrance to the AAFB and NAVFAC.
Housing, with a yellow crowned night heron on the window sill. We saw this very large area on the side of an incline covered in concrete and wondered what it was. We learned that it was a water catchment area. Part of the same water catchment area. This building held the chapel and housing. Garage. There is equipment attached to the roof inside which was used to lift vehicle engines.
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