Our Last Bahamian Cruise?

Tory swam to check on Molly as we enjoyed the beach on Spanish Wells.

Molly was a trooper as we cruised over 100 miles a day for three days last week going from Spanish Wells to the Berry Islands, then to Bimini and finally back to Florida.  We did spend an extra 4 days in Bimini awaiting calm seas to cross the Gulf Stream.  It was Easter weekend, and what we didn’t know was that this is also homecoming weekend in the Bahamas where residents return to their hometowns and celebrate both Christ and their own roots with music, very loud music.   

We found some great beach glass on the Bimini beaches, some of it no doubt from the remains of homecoming parties over the decades past.

Our 2nd Bimini marina was very quiet.  As usually, we are the
smallest cruising boat.

The size of the loudspeakers in an open lot next to the marina should have been the giveaway.  Multiple speakers were strapped together, 6 feet tall and 10 feet wide, on both sides of the DJ.  When the music started, it was easily over 100 decibels, but the killer was that the bass overwhelmed everything.  I tried to sleep with by pillow over my ears, but the bass vibrations seemed to only be further magnified.  The first night, a Wednesday (3/27), the music went until 1 am.  The second night until 2 am.  It was time to switch to a quiet marina 2 miles away.

The waters at sunrise for relatively calm for a Gulf crossing.
The cruise ship is anchored off North Bimini.

The Gulf crossing began at sunrise and was about as smooth as it could be as we averaged 17-20 mph and arrived at the West Palm Inlet around noon.  We then fueled up at nearby Sailfish Marina, and home to one of the largest sports fishing fleets in the country.  The dockhand told me that cash prices for trophy fish can be over $500,000.

 We then cruised our last miles to Indiantown Marina, near Lake Okeechobee, to prepare Salty Paws to be pulled from the water.  Our truck and trailer have been stored for the last two months.  Our cruising is done until summer. But we will use the boat as an RV while heading back to Maine.

This marina is filled with boats, mostly monohull sailboats, that people from all over the eastern US and Canada live on during the winter months and store here for the rest of the year.  Monohull sailboats are now very inexpensive as most new sailboats are catamarans, and older sailors are increasingly moving to trawlers and other power boats.  One can live on a sailboat here for a fraction of the cost of purchasing an RV and staying in a Florida RV park.  Some cruise to the Bahamas or the Keys, but most just seem to stay at the dock. 

We enjoyed talking and listening to our dockmates and also overhearing some of talk.  Jeff and Linda, next to us on the dock, are moving off their sailboat to return to Canada.  This exchange took place

Jeff: “I had a terrible afternoon.”

Linda: “What happened, honey?”

Jeff: “I hit a cow with our truck!”

Linda: “Oh, no.”

Jeff: “The ‘f….ing’ cow was just standing in the middle of the road!  Can you believe that?  

Linda: How is the cow?

Jeff: Dead, and the farmer was really pissed.”

Linda: “Sorry that the farmer took it out on you.”

Jeff: “He wasn’t mad at me.  He was mad at the cow!”

I do not know if we will ever return to the Bahamas.  Four trips are enough for Molly, and the weather by all accounts has been much windier over the last two winters.  Some of our cruising friends have had spend a few weeks in one protected spot to find a sufficient weather window to cruise between islands.

We do love the beautiful anchorages, the people, the waters and the nearly perfect temperatures.  I went back over our blogs documenting our visits in 2016-17, 2020, 2022 and 2024.  Here are some of the top experiences that we treasure.

Beautiful Anchorages

There is not a more picture perfect anchorage than the Exuma Land and Sea Park.  We stayed here in 2017 and 2020.

The best anchorage in the Abacos is off Sand Cay between the Double-Breasted Cays.  Molly and I spend 3 days there in 2022, and Dave Powers and I anchored there earlier this year (2024).

The People

Most of our cruising has been to lightly populated or more remote islands.  We have invariable found Bahamians friendly, pet loving, entrepreneurial and often with a fascinating history.  Here are a few stories.

Molly with Aaron.  Was he really
the museum director?

Was He Really the Museum Director?                                                                                                                                                      Most Aaron is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit as he greeted us warmly on the No. Bimini sidewalk and suggested that we tour the island museum that he directs.  He gave us a great tour, and then as I was about to put $10 in the donation box, he suggested that I give it to him directly in that sometime thieves are tempted by this receptacle.   Later, in describing this to another Bahamian, we learned that Aaron is not the director at all!  The tour was still worth the $10.

Whites Marrying Former Slaves

The original inhabitants of the Bahamas included the Lacayans and others, but they were largely wiped out by disease or enslavement by the Spanish, beginning with Columbus in 1492.   Spanish influence was ultimately replaced by British rule in 1783.  The islands became a refuge for British loyalists from the United States.  After Britain outlawed slavery in 1834, the island population was roughly 85% former slave.  What were former white slave owner families to do if they wanted to stay on the islands they loved?  

We visited one cay where the black marina owner shared this 1911 picture with us showing 4 white brothers, who all married former slaves.  Their growing families became a full-fledged island community.

Community Unknown for Almost 100 Years                                                                               Beginning in the 1820's or so,  Florida was increasingly a brutal ground for both Native Americans and formerly free blacks.  The US Army was in a campaign to exterminate the Seminoles, and blacks, formerly free under Spanish rule, were often enslaved by whites who were establishing plantations in the new state.  Beginning in the 1830's a number of Seminoles and slaves escaped Florida by crossing the Gulf Stream in open boats to the shallow western shore of Andros Island.  There, they established the community of Red Bays, that was unknown to the outside world until 1930.

We connected with a local guide and traveled by car 40 miles across the island to Red Bays, where we made a donation of school supplies.  Here we were so warmly greeted and entertained at a school assembly.

The Bahamian Waters

No picture does full justice to the Bahamian water.  After crossing the Gulf Stream from Florida, cruisers know they have arrived in the Bahamas once they reach the turquoise waters of the shallow banks that can extent for over 100 miles.  Water depths are typically 10-15 feet, but the clarity makes it seem that the water is much less than that.

We snorkeled near choral reefs, and usually found schools of colorful fish.

Conch is plentiful throughout the Bahamas and often used for fritters and salads.

Here I am snorkeling down to the stainless steel piano placed by David Copperfield off the cay that he owns.

That blob is an octopus!

They were hard to see, but we finally found a seahorse.

Goodbye, Bahamas...

Anchor Drag in Hard Bargain, Bahamas, and Off to Eleuthera

Anchored in Hard Bargain before the storm.

Dave went snorkeling most everyday.

Hard Bargain does not have a great anchorage, and Dave dove down in the water the previous day to ensure that our anchor was dug in sand.  A storm was coming, and we had put out 80-feet of chain anchor rode in the 6-feet of water.  Not that it mattered, but we did happen to be right off the local cemetery, where a few of the graves, all full length, were likely from a sea disaster.

I set the the anchor alarm to go off if the boat moved more than 60 feet from its present location.  The anchor alarm will also track the boat location.  Typically, it would show a slight u-shaped curve as the boat moves around the set anchor from the wind.  So, a 60 foot movement is not unexpected, particularly if the wind shifts as it was supposed to going from southwest to northwest. I do not mind waking up to check the anchor to guard against it dragging.

This screen shot shows two of the anchor drags.
The green circle reflects 60 feet around the 3rd set.

I slept well until the 3:45 am when my iPad screamed “Anchor Alarm, Anchor Alarm!”  I immediate rose and found that our anchor had dragged over 30 feet, and Salty Paws was moving ever closer to the shore.  We were now in 5 feet of water.  The anchor dragged because the now 35-mph wind shifted direction and had twisted the anchor out of one of the few sand spots in the hard marl ocean bottom.  I immediately started our main engine and put the throttle in slow forward to relieve the pressure on the anchor.

It was 4 am, and the dim light of dawn was still more than 2 hours away.  Rather than raise the anchor in the darkness and move the boat out from the partially protected lee of the point, I was hoping that the anchor would reset on its own.  Every 10 minutes or so, I put the motor back in neutral, only to have the anchor drag again and force me to put the throttle back in forward.  Each time we got a little closer to shore, and now we were in 4 feet of water.  Three more times I repeated the process, and finally the anchor held.  Dave started the coffee, and we waited for dawn.  It finally came, and the worst was over.

The channel on the right is the northern entrance to the Bight
of Abaco.  Measured depths at low tide are as low as 1.2 meters.

Hard Bargain is on Moore’s Island, the only populated island in the Bight of Abaco.  This body of water is roughly a 50-mile circle between Grand Bahama Island and Great Abaco Island, and most always avoided by cruisers because of its shallow 3–4-foot northern entrance.  As always, I am attracted to places that are off the beaten track and had brought school supplies to donate to the local school as we had done on earlier visits to three other Bahamian towns.  

Dave and I presented the supplies to the
three primary school teachers.

The 3 tubs of school supplies.

The school principal told me that the name Moore's Island is from the name of it's first settler.  As there are no written records, it is spelled as many ways - Moore's, More's and Morr's, with and without the apostrophe or the "s."  The town's name of Hard Bargain is thought to reflect the folklore that residents were know for driving hard bargains in bartering with other fishing communities.

The fishing boats in Hard Bargain are anchored off the beach.

The population of Hard Bargain is, perhaps, 500.  The houses are simple, but sturdy.  There is a medical building, an all-grades school, and two restaurants where the menus are just word of mouth.  The primary industry is fishing for conch and lobsters.  The local fishermen each own their own open cockpit boats while they collectively own an old 100-foot shrimp dragger.  This is the mother ship will tow up to 20 of the open cockpit boats to fishing grounds often 100 miles away.  They might be away for up to a week at a time.  Each fisherman receives his share based upon his own catch.  Everything is frozen, and will eventually be boated to Nassau for sale.

I met Randy, whose boat Blade washed up on the beach from
the storm.  It presented a good time for him, however, to do
some engine maintenance.  He would use pipes to slide the
boat off the beach at the next high tide.

Bahamian lobster traps are simpler than
those in the North Atlantic.  The lobsters
are attracted by the fish bait, climb up
to the top of the trap and fall into a chute 

I was very interested in the design of sea wall being built along the Hard Bargain shore.  Similarly to what I want to do in Maine on one side of our house, it is designed to stop the speed of the tidal surge, but not to stop the flooding.

A few days earlier, Dave replaced Molly for the 115-mile Gulf crossing form Riviera Beach to Little Grand Cay.  While we found the crossing fine at our 15-mph speed, Molly was more comfortable spending a week visiting our granddaughter and helping her other grandmother pack for a move.  The pictures below document our travels that took us 150 miles southeast, ending up in Spanish Wells, Eleuthera. 

Depths went from 4,000 feet to 15
feet as we reached the Bahamian
Bank.  Love the color of the water!

We went through Customs in the Bahamian village of Little Grand Cay.

The electricity on Little Grand Cay was out so they couldn’t pump gas.  We detoured 6 miles northwest to the fancy marina at Walker’s Cay.  The island is owned by Carl Allen, one of the heirs of the Walmart fortune.  It was essentially empty.

While heading southwest we stopped at one of my favorite anchorages, Sand Cay between the two Double-Breasted Cays.

I was a little late in taking a picture of the stingray swimming by David.

Hitting the ball for Tory at Sand Cay.

After leaving Hard Bargain we finished going through the Bight of Abaco
and passed by Gorda Cay, aka Castaway Cay, aka Disney Island.
The yellow dot is a kite flyer being pulled by a speedboat. 

Tory watched the sunset at Little Cave Cay,
hoping for one more trip ashore.

The Disney cruise ship on Disney Island.  We observed 100s
of people on the islands two beaches.

After passing Disney Island, we anchored off Sandy Point, where we planned to spend the night.  As sea conditions were improving, however, we decided to proceed the 50-mile crossing to Eleuthera, rather than wait until tomorrow.

Our first Eleuthera anchorage was well-known Egg Island, but we soon
proceeded to Meeks Patch, aka pig island.  Tory was very concerned when
Dave jumped from the boat in order to see and feed the pigs.  She even
got to the bow of Salty Paws on her own, a first!  See below.

Dave and I left Tory unhappy in the v-berth while we explored South Meeks Patch and picked a place for snorkeling.

The forecast for the next several days includes high seas and 20-30 knot winds.  We were
pleased to find the one remaining dock space in Spanish Wells, Eleuthera.

We looked forward to an ice cream cone in Spanish Wells, but decided not to compete with
the golf carts already waiting in line.

We took a short ferry ride to North Eleuthera for our 7-mile roundtrip hike to Preacher's Cave and the Sapphire Blue Hole.

Neither Dave nor I were much interested
in jumping in.

The Bahamas has roughly 100 blue holes, often 100s of feet deep, but the
Sapphire Blue Hole is one of the few on land.

Dave and Tory in front of Preacher's Cave.

English settlers were shipwrecked on a reef on the Devil's Backbone.  They
found the nearby cave that provided much needed shelter.  It was thought to
be a gift from heaven in answer to their prayers.

We went to the beach near the Preacher's Cave and looked out on to the Devil's Backbone that Molly and I had navigated two years ago when we went to Harbor Island and spent a week with daughter Liz and family.

Dave has been a great mate.  He is an experienced boater, and also a game player.  We alternated between Ghost, Oh Hell and cribbage.  He flies out today (Sunday, March 24th), and Molly will rejoin me later this afternoon.  We will be slowly heading back to the States provided that she is entirely comfortable with the seas and winds!