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When we first took off for the Abacos last season, we had some pretty idealized expectations about the color of water (blue), the number of anchorages teeming with friendly young people (many), the weather (warm and perfect), and how many fish we would catch (lots).
We were so positive, in fact, that we took off with hardly any chicken in the fridge, convinced we would be damn near pescatarians with all our inevitable fishing success. (Ok, so maybe this had more to do with the fact that we provisioned at Walmart at 10pm the night before we left the dock and they were out of chicken breasts…. but nevertheless, we were confident in our fishing skills.)
In many ways our expectations were met, but other things weren’t quite up to par – the grassy anchorages were tinted green, not every boat invited us over for a party (and they were always going the opposite way!), lots of storms rolled through week to week, and we were looking pretty sad on the fishing front.
We headed to the Bahamas this year with more realistic expectations. This time we were prepared for cooler temps and rainy days with a metal detector -a new land activity for restless Lindsey so Paul could watch movies on the boat. Yet again, we found ourselves caught by surprise.
It turns out the Exumas are what we were seeing in our sailing dreams! While we are still pretty convinced that the Abacos as a whole are our favorite, our time in the Exumas seemed to be embody what we thought sailing really would be.
I mean, just look at this place:
We had better luck meeting lots of people this year too. Part of this was from storing our boat at Indiantown: Lots of the people we met there were in the Bahamas, and we got to meet up with several them or at a minimum keep up with each others’ experiences through Facebook. In addition to this, it just seemed like there were more young cruisers this year. (FYI, “young” is anyone younger than typical retirement age, but “old” is a mindset and has nothing to do with physical age). We wondered if the Exuma island chain is a more popular destination, but our friends told us even they saw far fewer young people in the Exumas last year. Between YouTube-inspired sailors and those figuring out ways to work remotely (or retire early or temporarily), it appears our numbers are increasing.
I’m sure it helped that we were going the typical cruiser route at the typical cruiser time – lots of boats were heading south to make it to George Town on Great Exuma (the island where Fyre Festival was held, or not held!) in time for the Regatta. We repeatedly found the same anchorages as Holiday and their buddy boat Elixer, finally getting to spend some time with them in Georgetown. We met up with One-O-Six in Nassau, Black Point, Farmers and Georgetown – they are documenting their journey on a YouTube channel How Not To Sail a Boat. Our friends on Mariposa left George Town just before we got there, but luckily we still crossed paths and shared an anchorage for a night. There were a lot of other boats we didn’t get to meet but chatted with on Instagram as they always seemed to be close by.
We also met a Wisconsin couple who had flown into the Bahamas for vacation. It was fun to bring them out to the boat for dinner on a windy day. They got the “real” experience of wearing foul weather gear and getting splashed in the dinghy!
The loneliness we sometimes felt last year definitely wasn’t there this year!
And of course, the best part, we got to meet up with Cohort several times. We didn’t exactly “buddy boat” (you’ll never catch Paul doing something with a name like that), but we’d meet up for a few days here and there as we moved down the island chain. They showed us a shrimp-filled cave we had no clue existed; we had many sunset cocktails; we discovered fish are scared of laser pointers (don’t ask); we swam & hiked; we got our first lobsters!
Speaking of fishing, we did better with that too. Although the Exumas don’t have the large barrier reefs like the Abacos, we had enough luck on the banks to have a few seafood feasts. Triggerfish, conch, lobster, squid – we had quite the variety!
The weather was, for the most part, incredible. Unlike the Abacos’ weekly thunderstorms, we had mostly blue skies, and when the wind did come in, no storms accompanied it. The sunset on Valentine’s Day was the most incredible we’d ever seen.
We had nights of pure calm where we’d turn on the deck lights to illuminate the water and go night swimming in our very own “swimming pool.”
There was one night when the wind shifted to the north but the waves came from the west, which meant that our normally still-as-can-be boat rocked back and forth all night. We could have moved next to Little Farmers Cay for western protection, but we’re pretty stubborn at 10:00 pm… and midnight… and 2:00 am…. so we suffered through it, stuffing our separate berths with pillows to prevent our bodies from rolling. But that night was definitely the exception. I can tell you that the cloudy day metal detector never got used.
We enjoyed many new experiences in this part of the island chain.
We met J.R. the woodcarver on Little Farmers Cay. I think you can tell from the pictures that I was pretty excited to find some art I really liked. He gave us a tour of his property, its many edible plants and fruits, and his small carving shop. Has been a woodcarver for over 50 years and has traveled all over the world doing promotions for the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. He uses no electric tools and said a carving like the one I bought takes him 3-4 hours.
We cruised by lots of celebrity-owned private islands. Musha and Rudder Cays are owned by David Copperfield. We swam to the sunken mermaid statue. I had lots of great photo ideas, but the current was ripping when we got there, so these are the best we got! Of note, my free diving has greatly improved. Last year I could barely get 5 feet under water, but I’m up to at least 15 now!
This area seemed to have some of the clearest, bluest water in all of the Bahamas. As we took the dinghy from Rudder Cay to Darby Island, looking down upon the coral, stingrays, and grass was like looking through glass.
Our reason for going to Darby was to scope out its “Nazi” history – according to folklore, the island’s former owner was a Nazi sympathizer who signaled to U-boats and carved out places for them to hide. We had to go see this “U-boat trench.” This is also where we would have the most dangerous moment of our trip.
We had grand plans of a lovely sunset hike on the island, but we immediately noticed the horrendous and aggressive swarms of mosquitoes and no-see-ums when we tied our dinghy alongside the concrete dock. We dove into the water, but we knew this would be a quick swim since the bugs were following us, waiting to attack as soon as we surfaced!
It was easy to see why it’s suspected that U-boats parked here. The dock has underwater stairs and this narrow waterway between two islands suddenly plunges very deep and does appear to be man-made. A stingray was buried on the bottom and an eagle ray glided by us.
Paul swam to the other side of the trench and then headed back towards the dock. Just as he reached the dock, we heard a noise, but we couldn’t see where it was coming from. Suddenly, from around the corner, two large, speeding powerboats carrying the models and photographers from a photoshoot on Rudder Cay blasted by us. I shot my hand up to make sure they saw us, which they did, but they didn’t slow down. We prepared to swim over their huge wakes and watched our dinghy bash into shore. When looking at the map for this area, it looked very shallow beyond the trench, so I didn’t expect boat traffic. If I had known, we would have left the dinghy in the channel to warn boats we were there. We were a little shaken up from the fact that 30 seconds earlier, Paul would have been swimming right in the path of these boats, so we hopped back into the dinghy and zoomed away from the swarms of bugs back to the safety of Miss Fe.
Lee Stocking was one of our favorite stops even though Paul, fisheries biologist at heart, found it sad to see the closed down buildings of what was one of the nicest marine research facilities he’d ever seen. The caretakers said we could roam around, and the place was beautiful. There is a hike across the old airstrip and along the edge of the cliff to the highest point in the Exumas. It felt great to really stretch our legs!
Nearby on Normans Pond Cay is a cave with an entrance that is like a deep blue swimming pool and Leaf Cay is home to many pink iguanas – I thought maybe the iguanas were a joke until I saw them!
We had our first experience with someone anchoring way too close to us, and it was in a spot where the uneven current ensured the boats would not swing in sync. When it was undeniable that our boats were drifting closer together, we asked them to move since they had arrived after us. First the guy denied that there was a problem, but then he agreed with me that the current was not moving our boats the same way – yet he promptly disappeared back inside his boat after acknowledging the problem! We decided to be “the bigger person” and moved a half mile away where we had 6 white sand beaches all to ourselves.
We worked swimming into our daily routine. Last year there were a lot of no-rinse baths when the evenings got chilly, but this year, come 5:00 pm we’d dinghy over to a beach, soap up, wash our hair, swim and talk until our feet were prunes, and then head back to the boat for an on-deck solar shower fresh water rinse. Is it weird that this was one of our favorite things of boat life?
And of course, we saw lots of cool aquatic creatures:
All of this added up made me realize that the trip had really started to meet more of our original expectations. I’m not saying it was perfect. Cooking and cleaning in a small space takes way too much time. We spend too much time sitting with movies and shows on the computer. I shed like a dog washing my hair in salt water (though my hair became awesomely wavy and not frizzy). We can never agree on a consistent bedtime. Sometimes, I’d wish for a normal bed with a nightstand. Or a normal flushing toilet. (Check out our friends’ the Litzenbergers’ podcast on boredom on boats for a reality check.) But overall, the Exumas lived up to the “paradise” we thought they might be.
