Last 3 Weeks in Paradise: 25 Bahamas Experiences

Disclaimer: Since it is hurricane season, we wanted to clarify that our boat is safely stored at an inland marina in Florida. This post covers our Bahamas adventures back in May. We’ll update you on the current situation soon!

After leaving Grand Cay in March, most of our travel decisions were based on the idea of revisiting that particular island.  It is a jump-off point for scuba diving at Walkers Cay, which is supposed to be one of the best dive sites in the Bahamas. We’d provision and start to head north, only to realize we weren’t going to get a clear enough stretch of weather to make us feel good about venturing back into the more remote, less protected northern Abacos.

Once again, we were facing a nasty forecast in 3-6 days, so we decided we’d head south to provision in Marsh Harbour and then attempt to make it to Grand Cay. Ah, the sailing life – where it’s normal to turn grocery shopping into a multi-day adventure.

Spoiler alert: We never made it to Grand Cay! However these few weeks were the best of the trip. Here are 25 experiences from those weeks (in generally chronological order):

1. We tried our Monitor windvane for the first time ever.  Can we say – WOW!

   

   The windvane is essentially an autopilot – it’s a wing on the back of the boat that you angle into the wind and connect to the steering wheel, and it steers for you. People told us we would love it, but really, wow! Normally this would be used in open sea to allow you to focus on tasks other than steering or to just take a break, but we continued to watch our course carefully and frequently adjusted the windvane since we were in a narrow area. It was just so cool to see it working!

2. We had the most gorgeous day of sailing.  It was the only time in the Bahamas that we put up both foresails. Weather was sunny and beautiful. The water was paradise blue.
   

   

   We sailed at 5+ knots the whole time. The swell across Whale Channel was perfectly timed for a comfortable ride. It was a great reminder why having a sailboat is amazing!
   

3. Dolphins escorted us into the Marsh Harbour anchorage. They were a mama and baby pair, and they played in the bow. We’ve had so few dolphin sightings in the Bahamas compared to the US! We also saw sea turtles and a nurse shark in the anchorage.
   

   

4. We realized it’s a small world after all. We ran into a catamaran from Bass Lake, CA, a town near Paul’s hometown. We drove up to them in our dinghy, and it turns out they know a lot of people that Paul and his family also know.
   

   

5. I tried to watch sunset and instead saw a big fat waterspout. That one disappeared before I could get the camera, but a second, skinnier one formed on the horizon – not nearby thankfully! We’d met the couple who owns the powerboat in this picture earlier that day, so I emailed them the photo. Their response: “Holy shit!”

   

6. We dined with cool cats at the full moon party at Cracker P’s on Lubbers Quarters. We were greeted at the dock by one of their many bar cats.

   

   We got there before the crowds, when they were still making frozen drinks, and they were SO GOOD (not sure how much alcohol was in them but yummm). It was $25 for an all-you-can-eat-buffet that they kept refilling for hours and hours. By Bahamas standards, that is not an expensive restaurant meal and it was actually REALLY tasty – the chicken was excellent; the grouper and pork were good; the coconut conch was interesting.  Beer was overpriced, but otherwise this was one of our best meals out in the islands. The place has a little beach and paddleboards, so it would be fun to check out during the day next time.

7. We accidentally attended another full moon party.
   Noticing some movement on the beach at our Mystery Island X anchorage, we got out the binoculars (are we creepy?) and saw several people building a beach fire. We were tired, but we decided to eat dinner and then drag ourselves to the beach after we saw what we thought was fire dancing…. which turned out to be a light-up hula hoop that I was required to use as initiation into the party.  There was singing and guitar playing and people from Chicago who had literally planned their Bahamas charter around attending this full moon party because they loved it last time they were here…. 12 years ago. Attending this fire ended up being the best idea because…
8. We made friends who weren’t on the move! At the party, we met S & J, two experienced travelers and sailors who had been staying at this anchorage long term. As soon as J invited Paul to go spearfishing, I knew we’d be staying here a while, no matter how long Paul had to wait out the weather! In addition, we got to know the island’s residents who hosted the bonfire, and they were incredibly interesting and generous people – these are people who bought raw land and built it into a truly magical destination over the course of decades, with materials, groceries, and supplies they could bring in only by boat.
   Many people stop at this island to go walking, so there was always someone to talk to if you were hanging out on the beach. We met a lot of Canadians, including a family of 4 on a boat around the size of ours. They were homeschooling for a year while giving their daughters the adventure of a lifetime. The weeks were filled with dinners on boats, birthday celebrations, and more bonfires. Especially with S & J around, we got to experience the sense of community we really missed since we’d left the dock at Pineapple’s. We’re really so grateful to them for hanging out, showing us around, and tolerating all the times we yelled “ahoy” into their boat while S was on the phone!
9. We swam with the “tame” sharks and rays. S told us about a spot where the tour boats feed the sharks and rays.
   One common activity is to put squid between your toes and let the rays suck it out. We didn’t try this!
   No one was feeding the animals when we arrived, so Paul put on his snorkel and headed in, while I stood in the shallow water trying to work up some courage while also keeping a close eye on the rays and sharks (lemons, reef, and nurse) that ventured in looking for tasty treats.
   Eventually, after seeing Paul not get eaten, I went in too. We tried to get cool pictures but the sharks were way too timid to pose for photos. I acknowledge calling them “tame” is a joke and there might be some stupidity in swimming where the animals are used to being fed, but like I said, there was no active feeding going on and unlike this woman who got bit by a nurse shark, I kept my arms to myself and my eyes open!

   

   

10. We watched our boat neighbors battle a shark big enough to keep us out of the water. There was a big boat  anchored next to us a few days, and we later learned they were filming a pilot for an Amazon TV show (gotta get that boat tax write-off somehow, right?). We watched as one guy caught something huge on his fishing rod – he fought it for half an hour while people on the boat hooted and hollered and filmed whatever he was valiantly trying to reel in. After he gave up and caught the line, we took the dinghy by and shouted, “What did you have on the line!?”  He yelled back, “A 10-foot tiger shark!” We didn’t take any sunset swims after that.
11. No-see-ums are way worse than mosquitoes. All of a sudden, it got warm enough for the bugs to come out in full force. We discovered this when a walk through the woods turned into a race to the beach as we tried to outrun the mosquitoes. Little did we understand that the no-see-ums would be the true enemy. For a week I’d wake up in the middle of the night as the little itchy bumps would suddenly fire up again. The boats in the anchorage kept moving farther out to sea, as they tried to find a spot far enough from the island that the mosquitoes wouldn’t come for dinner.
12. We got to do some sweet scuba diving! Island X’s reefs are beautiful and full of little caves.
    Paul and I went diving on a rare calm day and spotted a magnificently huge elkhorn coral. J and I went the next day – he took me through some little caves and swim-throughs, where we saw a giant urchin, a moral eel, a big lobster, good-sized trigger fish, and a shark egg.

    

    

    

13. The slipper lobster reared its ugly head. Have you ever heard of a slipper lobster? Neither had we. But they’re so ugly that they’re cute. And they taste good too.
14. Bohnanza turned out to the be the world’s best card game. I’m not even joking. You get to be vicious and sneaky, but only if you want. Throw in a waterfront cabin and mojitos made with limes and mint straight out of the garden, and you pretty much have the best night ever.
15. We discovered foods we’d never heard of. We met some folks kind enough to share from their garden. When going to the grocery store presents you with soggy potatoes, soggy onions, and broccoli, being gifted fresh food is like being given $1000, and we are forever grateful.
    And to see the  amount of hard work and love that these people put into their garden was pretty amazing. In our tour of the place, we discovered fruits we never heard of, such as the sour orange, surinam cherry and the chocolate pudding fruit! J kept insisting that 1 of every 7 surinam cherries is sweet and delicious instead of bitter. I ate like 30 of them and haven’t found the sweet one yet!
16. We went land crabbing! J rolled up to our boat one day and asked if we wanted to go crabbing. Imagining this to include a trap being dropped in the water, I asked, “What does it involve?” He answered, “A canvas bag, long pants, long sleeves, flash lights, and bug spray… oh, and lots of rum. We’ll pick you up after sunset.”  When I told Paul, he said, “Oooooh, we must be going land crabbing!” I had no idea this was even a thing.
    On our ride to the scene of this activity, S & J gave us instruction on how to step lightly on the crabs’ heads and grab them behind the claws. Next thing we knew, we downed some rum and took off running down the trails, flashlights in hand. Soon enough, we’re busting through brush and diving into holes grabbing crab after crab, throwing them into bags and buckets…. and re-capturing the ones that managed to escape! The rum is an essential part of this because you have to give the grabs some sort of advantage.After caging and feeding the crabs for a few days to “clean them out,” a feast was had. I think we cooked something like 10 crabs for 11 people – those suckers are huge!
    

    

17. Bioluminescence lit up our world. Have you ever seen a fancy power boat with decorative blue lights under the stern? That’s what bioluminescence looks like. Microorganisms in the water produce light when disturbed. We’d just barely seen this before in Puerto Rico and Florida, but then it was like a little green glitter in the water. Here it was like having a blue flashlight under water. We drove the dinghy in circles to make it glow. I would entertain myself endlessly by leaning over the boat and bouncing fenders in the water, watching the it light up and giggling. We couldn’t get the camera settings right to capture it in a photo, but google it and you’ll get the idea. We thought it would be so cool to swim with our bodies glowing, but then we’d start thinking about that tiger shark….
18. Paul learned the art of spearfishing…. and shark fighting. When the weather finally settled, Paul went spearfishing with J. J knows the reef like the back of his hand, will chase fish into deep holes, and can hold his breath for several minutes, so Paul went truly as the student.In the Bahamas, you aren’t allowed to spearfish with scuba equipment, so you must hold your breath as long as it takes you to find, spear, and retrieve the fish. Paul’s spear is a pole attached to a giant rubber band. You pull the pole back to use the power of the band to launch the spear, but the band stays around your wrist so you don’t lose it.
    Problem number one – sometimes the fish fight back! Paul shot a fish, but before he could grab the end of the spear, the fish started to swim away, loading up the tension on the rubber band. The fish broke free and – “pop!” – launched the dull end of the spear right back into Paul’s chest. He recoiled, resisting the urge to gasp while 20 feet underwater.  Luckily, his only real injury was a bruise that lasted a week.Problem number two – the sharks know where J hunts. As soon as they hopped out of the dinghy into the water, the reef sharks were there, waiting for the spearing to begin. Normal protocol would be that if one person spears something, the other person acts as shark lookout/defense as you work to get the fish back to the boat. When Paul got a fish, he looked for J to signal it was time to roll, but he noticed that J had just speared a fish too!
    With 2 flailing, bleeding fish, they surfaced, trying to hold the fish out of the water as they swam for the boat, which now somehow seemed to be 100 yards away. The sharks were in hot pursuit, and the guys were ready to give them a good whack if they got within arms distance (don’t worry, they’re tough and wouldn’t be harmed). Though the sharks get close, J said they’re typical behavior is to look at you like, “What? You’re not a fish!” and then to swim off to the spot where the fish was originally speared.Trying to imagine what this is like? Here’s a picture from someone with a very similar experience:

    

19. Paul never looks happier than when he’s been fishing. :::love:::
    
    
    
20. Nature is so freaking awesome. And sometimes you just don’t have the camera ready. Paul tossed a scrap of fish off Miss Fe into the water. Instantly, a shark darted out from under our boat and grabbed the fish – then a barracuda larger than the shark came out and stole the fish from the shark!
21. We enjoyed the view from Foxtown. This little town on Abaco wasn’t originally in our list of places to visit, but as we made our way back towards West End to depart for the US, it offered us protection from easterly winds. The view from here, with all the rocks, made us feel like we were suddenly in a different country. And from the tall town docks (where the water is quite shallow, so dinghies only), we could see the sharks waiting for the fisherman to drop their scraps.

    

    

22. Bahamians don’t approve of Paul’s beer choices. Food was surprisingly affordable in Foxtown at Da Valley Restaurant – and holy crap the fried food platter was the best we’d had. And beers were $4, except for one called Bushcrack, which was only $3. Curious, Paul ordered a Bushcrack and the patron at the bar says to the bartender, “Did you warn him?!” Paul didn’t understand what the fuss was about though – it tasted light but still had 5.7% ABV. Plus the name is just funny.
    
    
23. No boat repairs! They say cruising is just fixing your boat in exotic places, but after leaving Florida, we were fortunate to have no real problems. Here we were, 2.5 months in the Bahamas, and the only thing we were doing was splicing a bad section of our jib sheet. It probably could have made the trip home, but we didn’t want to risk it since we wanted to head back to Florida with some actual wind so that it wouldn’t take 19 hours (unlike when we came to the Bahamas).While we were splicing , I pulled up the charts and realized we were still 2 days journey from West End, not one day. We’d gotten so spoiled in the populated part of the Abacos that we’d forgotten that not everything else was just a 10-20 mile hop.
24. We practiced our “rough weather” sailing. OK, I suppose it wasn’t actually rough weather in the mind of most cruising sailors, but it’s not a day the recreational folks would normally pick for “fun.” We had around 15 knots of wind and 3-4 foot waves as we headed from Foxtown to Great Sale Cay. There is no cell reception in Great  Sale, so the other boats were all over the radio discussing weather and Gulf Stream crossing plans. Despite the rough seas there were several boats who had just come from the US. The next day, en route to West End, the wind and waves had calmed down on Little Bahama Bank, but the waves were annoyingly choppy – I was fine with this as I still wanted to get used to rougher waters before we crossed. Paul even sailed through narrow pass near West End, and we had a big dolphin swim through our bow wake to say “farewell.”

    

    Once we were within range of cell phone service once again, we checked the weather again. Chris Parker’s forecast showed more intense conditions than previously predicted for Sunday night into Monday (we planned to cross Monday morning) – he now recommended crossing only for “Salty Sailors” with 5-6 foot waves and winds 14-19 knots, gusting to 24. This was about 5 knots and 1-2 feet more than we were hoping for. We debated waiting. We debated changing our haul-out date in Florida (a schedule is the enemy of sailors). We decided to wait a few more days. Then we questioned our decision. We researched some more forecasts. We consulted with J; he said we’d be fine.As we headed to the West End anchorage, we were exposed to the waves rolling in and they were about 6 feet. Getting to experience those waves made me feel better – they seemed manageable. We decided to head out Monday morning.

25. We managed to anchor at West End, but it was hard to sleep as we thought about coming back to the US.

    

    Though we heard other sailors say that West End is “the worst anchorage ever,” we’ve actually had good holding both times we anchored there.  We also tucked back in far enough that we weren’t exposed to those 6 foot waves. The problem is the current. After emailing a float plan to Paul’s dad, calling my parents, and prepping the sails for easy deployment in high winds, we attempted to sleep but the current moved our boat in a crazy pattern all around our anchor and kept shaking the snubber lose. The chain would then start rattling, waking us from whatever almost-sleep we were getting. Add in the anxiety of a big crossing, and we most certainly weren’t asleep until after midnight.

In conclusion, these last few weeks were amazing!! Here a bunch more photos, and stay tuned to hear about our adventure crossing back through the Gulf Stream to Florida!

Little fish swimming through a wrecked barge