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Abacos to George Town
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| Slocum 43 Pilothouse Cutter |
Updated March, 2003 |
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Green Turtle Cay Road
Hopetown Beach Shack
Blackpoint Settlement
Willie's Sculpture Garden
Hopetown Harbour
Stocking Island Cove
Snagging the Mooring
Tuna, Two Mackerels... Dinner for All
Laundry During Passage
Polaris in Hopetown
Bill and Ruth's "Tautaug"
Bob Prepares Coconut
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First Sunrise Over the Bahamas, starring Mother Nature A Little About the Bahamas This small chain of islands in the British Empire was only sparsely populated until England gave large land grants to American colonists who had remained loyal to the crown during the Revolutionary War. Harassed by victorious rebels in the United States, they traveled with families, slaves and all their household belongings to start new lives in this remote part of the British Empire. Grand plantations rose on the islands, but crops would not flourish on the harsh land. Cholera and hurricanes wiped out struggling settlers and their slaves, and the abolishment of slavery dealt a final blow to the few planters left. Within a hundred years, all that remained of most estates were ruins. The slaves were freed and populated the islands. Some descendants of the original families turned to fishing, others to piracy, luring ships onto the reefs and looting their cargoes. Still today, the Bahamas' only natural resources are its warm, crystal-clear waters and white sand beaches. It is for these that travelers come from around the world.
New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay The Trip "Down Island" Our first weather window for the Gulf Stream "crossing" came in late January. We reluctantly left behind our cruising partners, Pam and Bruce Kemper in Gato del Sol due to last minute engine problems on their boat. Leaving just as the sun rose, we motor-sailed at full power across the swift Stream current, to make our first anchorage behind tiny, uninhabited Mangrove Cay an hour after dark. From there, the following day, 20-27 knot winds blew us into the little harbor at Green Turtle Cay and the town of New Plymouth just before cold, 37-knot winds roared through. We'd made it. Memories of Green Turtle Cay are highlighted by our cart
tour over the island's rutted, rocky roads, Super Bowl Sunday at the Green
Turtle Club with a bunch of cheering Canadians and Americans, the tiny
one-room building that is the library with book swap opportunities and
internet access, and Miss New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay Emily's famous Goombay Smash at the Blue Bee Bar. At Laura's Kitchen we sampled just about every dish made with conch...conch fritters, conch chowder, conchburgers, conch salad, cracked conch...yuummmm. Green Turtle eased us into the Bahamian way of life...slow and easy, Mon. No problem. If the store is closed and the sign says "back at noon", it may not mean noon that day. The ice cream store was open from time to time and seemed to have no apparent schedule. Service was polite but unhurried and we adjusted to living each day with no real timetable. "Sticker shock" came with our first meals out and a trip to the local grocery store. Almost everything that sustains life has to be imported from the States or elsewhere and costs twice as much as we paid at home. Gasoline is $3.60/gallon. Doing three loads of laundry (ourselves) cost $26 dollars. Meals are double our prices. Rum seemed to be the only bargain and we quickly gave up our white wine and martini cocktail-hour preferences for our own rum punch concoction, the Prom Queen. The short "passage" from Green Turtle down to Great Guana Cay
or Marsh Harbor meant a few days of waiting for the rough waters in the cut at Whale Cay to settle down. We listened each morning for the cruisers' net weather broadcast hoping to hear that waves were not breaking on the Whale. Finally we joined several other boats making the cut while waters
seemed relatively calm and headed for Marsh Harbor. This is the Abacos
cruisers' hangout for provisioning and doing whatever business is
necessary before heading off to Miss Lily's Cat House It was at a Jib Room gathering that we met Bill Lacey from New Hampshire, and Ruth Kruysman from the Boston area, who planned to cruise on their Nordhaven trawler down through the Exumas to George Town. We agreed to reunite in one week to sail together. We cruised alone between the Abaco cays... charming Hopetown where we saw the house of Miss Lily who, before her death, took care of all the town's stray cats. Locals still deliver food each day to the porch and take a collection from visitors to continue feeding the cats... the beautiful beaches on Great Guana Cay where we swam naked and ate fresh coconut knocked from the tree...a visit to Man-o-War Cay and lunch at the Hibicus Cafe. We met back in Marsh Harbor where Gato del Sol had arrived with engine repaired and ready to sail. Champagne flowed.
Our three-boat flotilla made its way Harbor at the southern tip of the Abacos for passage to Eleuthera the following day. In remote and tiny
Little Harbor, Pete's Pub surprised us with some of the best food we had
enjoyed and a A blustery day's sail to Eleuthera brought the unexpected thrill of whales breaching nearby. Sails up and still under power, we pulled into the beautiful little harbor at Royal Island just before sunset. All six of our party headed over the ridge the next morning for Pete's Pub at Little Harbor snorkeling off the beach. My first snorkeling experience in the Bahamas brought me face to face with a six-foot, black tip reef shark just feet away. I don't think I drew a breath for the next full minute as I watched him quickly turn and swim away. We all reassured ourselves with popular wisdom that sharks are seldom aggressive toward people, then all got out of the water! Our next port was Spanish Wells, once one of the busiest and wealthiest
towns in the Bahamas. This small port was bustling with waterfront
activity and was a change from the Bill and Ruth pay mooring fee at "office." This was my favorite of the stops we made going "down island." It is also the sometime residence of well known watercolorist, Stephen Scott Young, whose remarkable paintings I had seen several years ago at an exhibit of the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. A Harbour Island gallery in Dunmore Town had a wonderful collection of his drawings and paintings.
George Town Shack |
Life in the Bahamas....No Problem, Mon.
Sonny and Renella , Spanish Wells Schoolkids in Uniforms Valentine's Day was spent making toward Hatchet Bay where a hurricane
several years earlier had devastated the tiny community. That afternoon we
motored into what seemed a lovely little harbor, soon noticing that the
community was like a ghost town. Gato Leads Polaris Through Cut We skipped down to Warderick Wells in the Exuma chain from Eleuthera to
enjoy to land and sea park there for a few Boo-Boo Hill at Warderick Wells snorkelers every day and come into the dock each evening for handouts. After three days of being in the water with these "pets," our heartbeats settled down a bit. We found Boo Boo Hill at the end of a walk to the top of the cay, where visitors leave personal memorabilia to mark their stay.
Water is so clear at Exuma Land and Sea Park that we could sit on our boats and watch brilliantly colored fish of all types swimming around the hulls and swim to nearby reefs from the boats to see the magnificent coral of all colors and types.
Staniel Cay is home to the grotto used in the James Bond film Entrance to Thunderball Grotto At Big Majors Cay next door, wild pigs have become accustomed to boats at anchor offshore and will swim out to boats and dinghys for mealtime leftovers. Cruisers have dubbed that west side of the island "pig beach." Bob was slow on the dole, apparently, and mama pig gave him a nip on the stomach to encourage better service. Pig Beach at Staniel Cay Blackpoint, a small village farther down the chain, is home to Willie and Betty Rolle and their now-famous Garden of Eden. For thirty years, Willie has been creating sculptures from driftwood and Betty has been developing a garden of exotic trees and plants that grow out of potholes in the rock surface of the Exuma chain. We toured the garden and ate samples of tamarind and other fruits we had never before tasted.
Betty Rolle in Garden of Eden At Larraine's Cafe we had a great lunch and went online for email before heading back out to our boats. That night we lay awake most of the night when a big squall came through the islands, shivering our timbers and renewing our respect for Mother Nature. We anchored an extra day at Blackpoint, waiting for a good "window" to go through Galliot Cut into Exuma Sound for the run to Georgetown. The pass through the cut was blustery and rough, settling some as we turned south into the wind. A long day brought us all safely into Elizabeth Harbor at Georgetown, protected by Stocking Island on the east and Great Exuma on the west. And, we had made it in time to welcome our guest Bob Mueller from Milwaukee.
George Town is not pretty, but the surrounding waters and beaches are
the most beautiful anywhere. Cruisers from around the world congregate
every winter in large Elizabeth Harbour, this year numbering more than
400 boats while we were there. It was Regatta Week and we ate roast pork
at the waters and reefs surrounding the harbor. Bob Mueller reveled in the warm weather and reported six inches of snow in Milwaukee upon his return home. Our next update will cover more of George Town and a visit with Illinois friends Janis and Al Davis who will sail with us from George Town to Nassau.
Bob Mueller Departs
"Home" by
Dinghy
Elizabeth Harbour Exuma Park
Blackpoint Cottage Stocking Island Ridge
Blackpoint Police Blackpoint Super Market
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Ice Cream...sometimes 
Cold Front in the Abacos
Hopetown Cottage
Daily Weather Study
Many Abandoned Shacks
Green Turtle Cay
Green Turtle Cay Beach
Hopetown Cemetery
Green Turtle Cay
the smaller cays. Only the extraordinary
people we met there, their ability to make their own fun, and easy travel
to some of the more scenic areas of the Bahamas gave us any reason to
spend time in this lackluster harbor. Miss Boo at the Jib Room welcomed
boaters whole-heartedly and gave her cafe and lounge over to many meetings
for cruisers trying to find "buddy boats" for passages and
organize for cruising . 
tour the next day of famous sculptor Randolph
Johnson's studio and gallery, still run by his artist sons.
sleepy towns we had visited. A day on
nearby Harbour Island, called "Briland" by the natives whose
difficulty with the British "H" changed the name through the
years to "Our Briland," was a highlight of the cruise. 
Only the occasional bark of a dog or a
rooster crowing gave any sign that there was still life in the run-down
shacks at the far end of the harbor. We set out the next morning for Rock
Sound where similar devastation is now giving way to a determined little
town where locals go out of their way to welcome visitors.
days. Snorkeling was excellent
in the pristine park and the harbor was one of the most beautiful we have
seen anywhere in the Bahamas. The park rangers' children have made pets of
Bubba the barracuda and two large lemon sharks, all of which swim with the 
"Thunderball."
Bob and I snorkeled into the grotto at low tide and were awed by the
beauty of the fish and coral illuminated by natural openings at the
top of the rocky island and by the strange beauty of the cavern itself.
