On March 9th, we departed the northern tip of Long Island on a windy, squally day and raised a reefed main and set our jib. We cruised along southwest at about 6 kts covering 25nm to passing by the Bahamas rocks and into George Town Harbour, hands down one of the most sought after anchorages in all the Bahamas. This is not necessarily the quiet serene part of the Exumas quite yet! Quite the opposite really.
Located on Great Exuma Island, the largest in the Exumas at 61 sq mi, this particular area is the “hub” or “Cruiser Nation” of the Bahamas. George Town, the capital city, boasts a busy international airport, as well as many resorts, hotels, shopping options, amenities, marine stores, and groceries all easy to get to and, bonus, 100s of other sailors to hang out with! In fact, every morning on VHF Channel 72, there is an hour long run down of updates on weather, what is happening, meetups planned ashore, requests for assistance, and much more. It is a place you can stay put for a long time in an active community. I swear some people don’t leave for the entire season. We were just stopping through to reprovision mostly and hit some of the more infamous spots we had heard so much about.
We anchored in about 2 meters on a sandy bottom around the Moss Cays between George Town and Stocking Island as everywhere else seemed overly crowded. When I say two meters…at low tide, it was less than that as our keels were mere inches off the sandy bottom! Shallowest water we have sat in to date. Little unnerving. We found ourselves in fairly calm water during our stay even on windier days. The water was still clear enough to see the anchor on the bottom, but not the crystal clear waters we had gotten used to. One does have to wonder where all these long-staying boats off load their grey water tanks since there really is no pump. Might opt to going snorkeling based on the tides!
George Town – Capital of the Exumas
The first afternoon in town was spent getting some chores done. Re-provisioning and finding some boat parts to fix a few nagging issues. We headed over to the George Town Dinghy Dock through a dinghy pass, a small one way tunnel leading into Lake Victoria. The dock it self is long and sturdy, but often very crowded. Sometimes you have to walk over other dinghies just to get tied up.
From there you walk up into a busy colorful area with a laidback local vibe. Our first stop was the Exuma Yacht Club and Bar. After a day of sailing, we were hungry and could use a cold beverage with a view. It was incredibly slow service, which you get used to in the islands, but the beers were cold, the burgers good, and the view overlooked the harbor. So it hit the spot.
While in town, we dropped trash on a truck for $5 a bag, we picked up Bahamian SIM cards (pre-starlink!) for our phones at the local BTC shop. It was quiet and slow, but they were friendly! We were able to get additional gas for Nugget at the local Shell station and pick up much needed groceries at Exuma Markets Unlimited. This was the first “proper” grocery store we had seen in awhile with a decent, yet pricey, selection so were able to stock back up on a lot of shelf-stable items as well as basics, fresh fruits, vegetables and meats.
From there we jumped back in the Nugget and took a 20 min scenic dinghy ride south to Brown’s Marine, a relatively large marine store that thankfully provides a dinghy dock. It was very well stocked, but as you can imagine a bit pricey, but not unreasonable. We were able to get what we needed for some random boat fixes. The staff was great in helping us find some small items we needed.
Stocking Island
With all the “work” out of the way and waiting on good sailing weather, it was time to explore. Over the next two days we spent most of our time on Stocking Island, a small island across from the port of George Town. The island boasts white sand beaches, short hikes and the infamous Chat ’N’ Chill Bar & Grill. As we were bouncing around the sites in the dinghy, we had some dolphin escorts!
The highlights:
Sand Dollar Beach – A beautiful stretch of secluded beach that leads to some nice hikes, a shallow place to swim, and place to find sea treasures and have nightly bonfires. Recommend lots of bug spray 🙂 Pretty much the quintessential Bahamian beach experience!
Chat N Chill – A very lively stretch of beach set up for all the social fun you can pack into a day with tables, a bar and grill, music, corn hole, tree swings and a sand volleyball court where they have kids and adults games scheduled every day. Lot’s of energy! If you are their on Sunday which we were, you can partake in their giant pig roast party. Any other day grab some reasonably priced burgers and beers, pet the docile well-fed stingrays that linger just off the beach and grab a tasty freshly made straight-out-of-the-water conch salad…just head to the enormous pile of discarded conch shells to find the guy!
Snappy Turtle Bar and Grill – Our first stop was actually to snorkel some caverns in the hurricane hole located on Stocking Island. There is a spot known as the “Mystery Cave” under a 5’ cliff that connects to the ocean known to have plenty of fish to spot. We opted to just dinghy around to spot the turtles and fish from the surface after seeing the entrance to the “cave”. Maybe next time! After, we stopped for a beer at the Snappy Turtle. It had a great view and we enjoyed the sun going down from it’s balcony.
Hiking – At 3.5 miles long the island has a lot of great short trails to chose from with a variety of terrain to explore. We anchored our dingy on the beach just below the Stocking Island Monument which dominates the view. Our goal was to find our way to the monument as we weaved our way across the sand dunes into a full-canopy shaded path out to the Atlantic Ocean side for a cliff view, then back through the tropical rainforest where we found some hidden coves and made our way close to the monument but not quite all the way. We also stumbled upon an old Navy Beacon from the 1800s that acted as a marker for ship. It was a beautiful day, just with we had had more time.
in the Distance
While it was a bit of a culture shock having spent the last week or so in the outer islands, we loved our stop here. We are stocked up and ready to move on. We are ready to go, but e will definitely be back though as there is so much we still haven’t seen in the area and it this is a good launch point if you come to the Bahamas for the winter. It’s a lot easier to move back towards the states from here with the trades than vice versa.
Williams Cay, Lee Stocking Island
On March 13th, we took the long path out of the Port of George Town and headed up Atlantic coast of Great Exuma. Our next destination was Staniel Cay, but we weren’t going to make it one day with weather turning late afternoon so kept our eye on the chart for a good stopping point for the day. We made good time with a reefed main. Honestly, It will always be reefed from this point on since the reefing line snapped all the battens below that section. Cool.
We decided to duck in through Adderly Cut and anchor on the southwestern side of Lee Stocking Island in an area called Williams Cay. The entry is incredibly shallow in places and we had one of two choices, hug the coast or veer a little wide and head over the shallow sand bank. Neither felt like a good choice. We opted wide and went very very slowly. Which was good, because we had our first bounce or two as we scraped the barnacles off the bottom of our keels. We moved from the ‘those that will’ to the ‘those that have’ grounded. We chose poorly :). High tide would have made it fine. Sadly it was not that time of day.
No harm done as it was all sand and we just brushed the sandy bottom. Planning to ride out a quick front for the night, we did not go ashore. It was a bouncy night with SWS winds, but the view was gorgeous and the water super clear and the anchor held well despite the bottom being very grassy. We had lots of sea life to watch throughout the night to keep us occupied.
We’ll definitely be back to explore known their are some great snorkeling spots, hiking trails and an old abandoned marine research facility to explore.
NEXT STOP: Staniel Cay