Saltwater Stories: Sailing the Bahamas one anchorage at a time.
🌊 We’ve traded highways for trade winds and swapped backyards for blue horizons. This series follows our slow journey island by island through the Bahamas — the quiet anchorages, the quirks ashore, and the kind of moments you can only find when your home floats.
Slipping Out of Nassau
Late March 2023, our sails were fraying and Florida was calling. But first—one last detour through the Berry Islands, a stop every cruiser who’d been there swore was magic.We woke at sunrise, raised anchor, and slipped out of the harbor before the morning parade of cruise ships could box us in. Once free of the mayhem, we hoisted the spinnaker and enjoyed champagne sailing across the Northeast Providence Channel: 12–13 knots of breeze on our backs, blue horizon ahead, and our sights locked on the Berries.
A Bit About the Berries
About 30 miles northwest of Nassau, this small, stirrup-shaped chain of islands looks unassuming on a map (if you can even find them). In reality, it’s about 30 major islands, hundreds of cays, and 30 square miles of aquamarine ocean dotted with sandy hideouts.
Once home to thatch-berry trees (hence the name) and settled by freed slaves in 1836, the Berries are now home to fewer than 1,000 residents. No hotels, no resorts—just a scattering of villas, a couple of airports, and seasonal millionaires who’ve made it their personal hideaway.
Fun fact: thanks to those second-home residents, the Berry Islands boast more millionaires per square mile than anywhere else in the world.
Tourism here is different. There’s no nightlife or tiki-bar circuit. You bring your own boat, and your own sense of adventure. What you get in return? World-class anchorages, wild beauty, and the kind of quiet you can actually hear along with maybe a church or lighthouse ashore, a surprise “restaurant,” tucked away and plenty of mysterious ruins.
Chub Cay: Billfish Central (But Not for Us)
Chub Cay, the “Billfish Capital of the Bahamas,” is where big-game fishing rules. Sitting at the edge of the Tongue of the Ocean—a trench that drops to 4,000 feet just south of the island—mahi, tuna, and wahoo thrive here. It’s also crawling with mega yachts and tournament boats.
We decided to skip the scene and head north, trading marinas and fishing derbies for something wilder.
Bonds Cay: Four Nights of Pure Bliss
Our target: Bonds Cay, a 700-acre private island once owned by Shakira and Roger Waters (yes, really). If you have a a spare $50 million lying around it could now be yours! Check out the listing here.
From above, Bonds looks like a narrow slice of land. Easy in and easy out. The approach, however, was tricky—narrow channels, shifting sands, water shallow enough to make you sweat. But once inside? Pure magic.
The anchorage was glass-flat. Sand and seagrass lay clear beneath us. I was able to watch a tiny sand crab harassing a small flounder six feet below without even getting wet. Barry, the resident barracuda, cruised by to introduce himself, and then never left. Days melted into snorkeling, paddle boarding after curious sharks, losing ourselves in books, sipping sundowners and watching the horizon erupt into green-flash sunsets. We planned to stay one night. We stayed four.
Hoffman Cay: Blue Hole Adventures
When the tide was right (read: high!), we motored north along the shallow Bahama bank passing Alder, High, Little Harbor, and Devil’s Cays (each worth a stop). How shallow? The boat behind us who we were reporting the depths back to, decided to stop following us, turn around and head up outside the bank. 8 miles later and without having touched bottom, we arrived at Hoffman Cay. It is yet another uninhabited gem—350 acres of jungle, palms, and wild beaches. Weirdly, also for sale… 214 of those acres could be yours for the small price of $18 million. If you are curious, the listing is here.
Hoffman’s star attraction is its blue hole — After a short 10 minute palm tree-lined hike up a narrow path, we stood atop a 20 ft cliff peering down into a perfectly round, 600-foot-wide, 600-foot-deep saltwater pool fed by the ocean from somewhere deep below it’s surface. We scrambled down to the cave below and swam in its refreshingly cool waters, and—of course—climbed back up for a jump from the top. Floating in the middle of that inky circle. I only spotted a turtle, and lots of oysters, not much else though Kevin swears it’s the home of the Kracken. Perhaps, but I do know it was eerie, magical, & unforgettable.
Back at the boat, snorkeling brought the usual suspects—turtles, nurse sharks, angelfish, starfish, and more conch than we knew what to do with. (Still haven’t braved harvesting one. YouTube tutorials only help when you have internet!) Later, I paddled into a mangrove cove nicknamed Turtle Bay, spotting rays, nurse sharks, and (yes) more turtles, lots of turtles darting every which way.
By night two, easterly winds turned the anchorage a bit rough so we nixed our bonfire at the beach. Instead, we opted to lay on the deck stargaze, rock gently in the chop, and call it good.
Great Harbour Cay: The Hub (Sort Of)
When the winds eased, we lifted anchor for Great Harbour Cay, the “hub” of the Berries. Seven miles away as the crow flies, but for us, a 25-mile detour to avoid the shallow banks which took us past the carnival islands of Coco Cay and Great Stirrup Cay. Owned by cruise lines, they’re packed with zip lines, slides, and even a hot air balloon. Tag-lined a “Perfect Day at Coco Cay”. More like Perfect Day at Disneyland-by-the-Sea.
By contrast, Great Harbour itself felt quiet, almost too quiet to be described as a hub of anything. The island is the most northern and largest of the chain at eight miles long, 1.5 miles wide. With fewer than 350 residents (most of whom are employed by the cruise lines), it serves as the entry way into the Berries. It’s home to the main airport, a hurricane-hole marina, and an immigration office. Essential, but not exactly buzzing.
We dropped anchor just of Ray Cay. It was a bit of a letdown after the wild beauty of Bonds and Hoffman. Murky water, rolly anchorage, and shuttle boats buzzing workers back and forth to the cruise ships. Upon checking our anchor over the bow, we found our anchor had made itself at home, literally. Our Anchor was twisted around a lawn chair currently occupied by a lion fish. So random.
After disentangling our anchor chain, we jumped in Nugget and headed over to check out a sunken DC-3 airplane (meh) which I’d be wary of snorkeling around. Very shallow in not great water. From there, we dinghied around the northern side of Great Harbor Cay to Bullock Harbor tied Nugget off to the dinghy dock (read: small swimming platform in a foot of water) and walked ashore.
Not much to report on here. We walked by a small conch shack and a dumpster on the “docks” and proceed up a “road” past a church and grabbed a corona and some “crack chicken” at Hammerheads restaurant (double meh). I kept waiting to hear “Won’t you gentlemen have a Pepsi” … kudos if you get that reference (if not, look it up because you missed a great 80s movie)! On the way back, we stopped by the pint-sized Whitewater Grocery. If you catch it on the day of the week they get a delivery, you might get some fresh food, otherwise it’s primarily shelf staples.
It wasn’t much, but Great Harbour is a crucial staging point. If you head into the main harbor/marina area, there is a bit more, but not much. It being a safe hurricane hole, one of the few places to stop for immigration and customs, it’s really just a launch pad into the Berry Islands. For us, it was our last stop before our launch pad, Bimini Island, and our final push home after 10 months away.
Next Stop: Bimini
We lingered an extra day, waiting for a calm weather window. When it came, we lifted anchor, ten months into our liveaboard journey, and are finally within striking distance of home.
Up next: Bimini — The true Gateway to the Bahamas.