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!

[Google_Maps_WD id=14 map=7]

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 Monitor at work behind Paul

    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.

    This photo is from the day before…. only 1 sail up then haha

    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.

    Nurse shark
  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.

    These snails agree its a small world!
  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!”

    Left side of photo… the skinny water spout below the clouds
  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.
    The welcome committee at Cracker P’s on Lubbers Quarters

    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.

    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.land crab Abacos Bahamas
    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!

    I make ridiculous faces when handling crabs.
  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:

    Sorry Joe, I stole your photo cause it’s just too cool
  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.
    Sharks and more sharks

  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.”
    Checking the weather

    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.
    Crossing the gulf stream
    Way too amped up to sleep – bye bye Bahamas! We’ll be back soon!

    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

Angel fish
Nassau grouper
Huge puffer fish
Our first sighting of the invasive lion fish
Paul trying to kill the invasive lion fish

 

Upper left corner… this fish kept attacking the camera, haha
Heading to Cracker Ps

Colossal Conch and Pig Island Palooza!

[Google_Maps_WD id=8 map=4]

Big news – we caught our first conch! And it’s a monster! Even with instructions, it took some time to figure out the right place to cut to free the animal from its shell – but once we did, conch salad and conch fried rice were on the menu!

Catch the conch!
Cut a hole in the shell to reach the conch's muscle
Poke a hole in the shell and cut the conch’s muscle from where it holds on
Pull the conch from the shell, remove a few inedible parts, then slice and dice
Our conch salad = conch, onions, peppers, cucumbers, lime juice, OJ, hot sauce

Hopetown Hopetown Hopetown. It seemed like once we were south of Whale Channel, all the action on the radio was about Hopetown on Elbow Cay, so we headed there to check it out. We debated taking a mooring ball in the harbour – we’d never used a mooring before – but ultimately decided it was silly to pay to be not attached to land when we could just anchor outside of town. And boy, were we glad we had anchored out – Hopetown is well protected, which means no wind, and it was roasting in town while we had a great breeze anchored out by the lighthouse.

Elbow Reef Lighthouse at Hopetown, Elbow Cay, the Bahamas
Elbow Reef Lighthouse at Hopetown

We spent about 3 days in town. If you like to poke around in shops, Hopetown is probably the best place in the Abacos to do it. We went to the beach twice to escape the heat. The reef was very close to the beach, within easy swimming distance, though you had to swim out farther to get past the murky, sandy water where the waves crashed. Though we saw some big brain coral, a huge snapper, Nassau grouper, and stingray, the reef was a bit disappointing after seeing how beautiful the one at Fowl Cay was.

Paul swimming Elbow Reef
Making friends on the beach

We hung out at Cap’n’Jacks for tacos and 2-for-1 margaritas. We met a couple our age who flew down to escape the Canadian cold, a guy from SC who is spending months here on a mooring ball, and a couple that comes here every year for weeks to months and just bounces from vacation home to vacation home if they can’t find one available for their whole stay.

Hopetown’s beaches look pink in the right light

We toured the Elbow Reef Lighthouse, the only manned, kerosene-lit lighthouse left the world. It was pretty neat and it’s not government funded, so we bought some postcards in gift shop – which are so outdated that they claimed the Bahamas still had 3 manned lighthouses!

Elbow Reef Lighthouse Lense in Hopetown
Elbow Reef Lighthouse Lens
View of Hopetown from the lighthouse
View from the lighthouse

While we were in the lighthouse, we saw the dark rain clouds coming. We joked about going back to the boat to shower and wash the boat in the rain, but figured it would only last 10 minutes. But no, it rained and POURED for hours. We left the lighthouse and hung out on a covered dock for a while. Then ran through the rain to the public restrooms (several towns have public restroom buildings, one of the pleasant surprises here, haha) and then to a bar, where the Bahamian military personnel were also waiting out the rain (but only drinking Coke).

The rain about to pummel Miss Fe
Soaking wet – he always picks the worst days to wear the moisture activated “cooling” shirts

After the rain finally stopped, we went to Wine Down Sip Sip, which, in addition to having 2-for-1 drinks, also had probably the best restaurant food we had in our whole trip — PIZZA. Now this was fancy pizza, which normally is never as good as normal New York pizza, but somehow this flatbread with pepperoni, sundried tomatoes, and artichoke was one of the best pizzas we’d ever had. So good we almost ordered a second one that day, even though it was $20 and not that big. So good that we haven’t stopped talking about how good it was and I might be drooling just thinking about it.

We were in need of a major provisioning run, so we next sailed across to Marsh Harbour, where we’d previously road tripped with Dave. Over the course of few days, we got Paul a haircut (in an hallway with no business signs where a kid helped by yelling “Dad! Customer!”), bought at least 3 weeks worth of groceries, finally did laundry at the 4th place we tried, dinghied around to many bars only to realize this place just isn’t that lively on a Saturday night (making me really miss my friends), and had a good meal at Mangoes where I realized I had never been so happy to eat fish that was grilled instead of fried!

Fresh new haircut – and yes both carts are ours
OMG real food (crab stuffed hogfish)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While doing laundry, we met a couple who asked us, “How are you doing this at your age?” and then they explained they were asking because when they started cruising 25 years ago, this was the question that people asked them. They said at that time, the wife took a sabbatical from work, the husband sold his business, and they sailed off to Venezuela with their 11-year-old son. Their son would take the bus by himself to the next town over to buy ice cream – they told him he was allowed to do this as long as he came back knowing one new word in Spanish – and he eventually learned to speak Spanish fluently. They said now though that they feel no need to go further than the Abacos! They aren’t the only people who have sailed all over yet told us the Bahamas are all they need!

View from the laundry rooms. “The water’s not blue in Marsh Harbour,” they said – they lied.

There was a boat in the harbour that I recognized from a Facebook blog Enterprise Sailing that I had been following because the guy’s journey down the ICW was around the same time as ours. We spun around the boat in our dinghy like total creepers, until a shirtless, 20-something guy poked his head out. I yelled, “Hi! Not to be creepy, but I follow you on Facebook!” He seemed to be not weirded out by this, and we chatted for a bit; his name is also Paul. His girlfriend was flying in soon and we said hopefully we’d catch them later.

Our last night in Marsh I watched needlefish and shrimp swim around our boat as it got dark.

Marsh Harbour sunset

When I had told coworkers I was sailing to the Bahamas, multiple people asked me, “Are you going to go to Pig Island?!” The original “pig island” is Staniel Cay – no where near us – but the Abacos has a copy cat attraction at No Name Cay. That was our next destination.

No Name Cay

No Name is north of Whale Channel, so we once again waited for calm weather to cross it – and this time we were prepared to fish it. On our first few tries, as soon as Paul dropped the lure in the water, a snapper would hit – we got one big enough to keep for dinner. We also put out larger lures on the hand lines – I thought something hit and when I pulled it in, the lure was missing an eye and had some fresh teeth marks in it. We were happy to finally have some fishing luck!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At No Name Cay, we grabbed our cameras and headed for the beach. A couple tour boats were already stopped there, and the pigs had run towards them to check what was for lunch. “Piggies!” I squealed as we beached the dinghy – I mean, really, how else are you supposed to react? Big mamas, tiny piglets, and everything in between swarmed us to find out what snacks we had brought them. It turns out they don’t care about onions and peppers, but they were quite thrilled about the cantaloupe. Though they would wade into the water for food, they had no interest in doing any actual swimming.

Some local restaurants donate their scraps to the pigs. We also watched a guy who was driving back and forth from Green Turtle to haul water to the pigs. I asked him how often he has to do that – he said every 2 months but that left me wondering if that means someone else is coming in between his runs. Why are pigs on a beach so exciting? I have no idea – it’s just fun, I guess!

“I don’t have anything left to feed you!”

Swimming pigs No Name Cay Bahamas
Sunbathing with my new friend after I asked Paul, “Do you think that pig wants to be buried in the sand and have a mermaid tail?” The pig loved it.

The walk to the ocean side of No Name was nice at low tide; I wish the ocean hadn’t been so rough so we could have checked out the nearby reef. We really enjoyed snorkeling in the mangroves here too – it was just a nice change of pace for underwater scenery, and we saw huge schools of tiny, shiny fish, a bunch of snappers, some big stingrays, and lots of juvenile conch. And of course we saw a big barracuda. One of the guide books suggested getting out of the water if you see a barracuda. If we followed that rule, we’d never get to swim!

low tide at No Name Cay

We liked No Name so much we stayed for several days and had the place to ourselves for most of it.  The weather forecast called for storms with 40 knot winds on Monday, so we wanted to get into a marina at Green Turtle Cay a few days in advance of that. Our last day in No Name, a boat came up to us to say hello – it was Other Paul and his girlfriend Jamie. They were heading to Green Turtle – we said we’d see them there!

Fish in No Name Cay The Bahamas Pig Island
Surrounded by the fishies