After Bimini, our first land fall in the Bahamas, we made our way to Nassau, primarily for the purpose of provisioning and picking up our new dinghy motor (Yamaha 15 hp 2 stroke, highly recommend). After a few days in Nassau, on January 17th, 2014 we made our first stop in the Exumas. After all of our preparing and planning, we were finally going to lay eyes on this beautiful chain of islands that we had heard so much about. There is always a part of you that’s worried that something won’t live up to expectations. To sum it up, the Exumas are a little string of cays, each with its own supportable claim to the title of paradise and lie in very close proximity, generally about 10 to 20 nm apart. What that means, is that you can explore one and then make a tiny two to four hour hop, then explore the next. It seemed that as we worked our way down the chain, each place was my new favorite. We pretty much snorkelled at every stop, and that also got better at each stop. Snorkelling is my new addiction.

As is tradition for most boats traveling to the Exumas from Nassau, the first stop was Allen Cay, notable for its very rare iguanas that populate the small surrounding islands and who approach you when you go ashore because they are looking to get fed. Kind of like pigeons at McDonalds, but a little cooler. We did some snorkelling around some reefs and saw a pretty good variety of fish.

Next stop Norman’s Cay. Just wow. I could go back and spend a week there. With buddy boats Romana and Vita, we dove on a large plane wreck that that was reportedly from the drug running days of the Bahamas. It was teeming with fish and there was two large southern stingrays hunkered down in the sand. At nearby Boot Cay we spent a beach day with Romana and Vita. At low tide in the extensive shallows, there are deep undulations in the sand that created multiple crystal clear blue pools that we swam in under the hot sun. They looked like puddles, but you can do a full dive into them.

From Norman’s Cay we left for Warderick Wells, Exuma Land and Sea Park which is touted as the most favoured stop in the Exumas. As a national park, it is a “no take” zone, and therefore the snorkeling is amazing because the fish live to a ripe old age and are therefore HUGE. We were assigned a mooring ball and spent five nights. It’s a complicated process to be awarded a mooring ball, you have to queue up on the VHF radio in the morning the day before you want to arrive and then wait nervously for the news the day of. (I felt like I was trying to sign up my kid for karate, and I don’t even have a kid).
We snorkelled the Coral Gardens and Emerald Rock at Warderick. The coral heads were teeming with abundant fish. We also spotted a large loggerhead turtle, more than three feet across.

Our next stop was Cambridge Cay, probably a two way tie for my favorite spot. It is at the southern end of the national park and therefore still in a “no take” zone. Nearby Little Bell Island is owned by Johnny Depp. Alas, he didn’t show up to the cruisers happy hour. Nearby O’Brien’s Cay features the “Aquarium Wall”. It is a steep bank of coral that has a very wide variety of fish and they tend to gather underneath the dinghies that are tied off to nearby mooring balls. When you enter the water, you feel like you have been dropped into a screensaver featuring reef fish. The Sargeant Majors are very abundant (Sargeant Majors are the pigeon of the reef fish, we see scads of them everywhere). We were there with Romana and Vita, and one afternoon we decided to do a dinghy drift happy hour where we tied off the dinghies and floated in the shallows enjoying a cold beer (maybe two). We spotted a shark in the shallows and followed him and identified it as a reef shark. We also had multiple large stingrays come by in the anchorage. One afternoon Guillaume and Rob of Vita, put together Vita’s lovely sailing dinghy and Rob and Guillaume toodled around the anchorage.

Our next stop, the other tie for my favorite was Staniel Cay. We dropped the hook at Big Majors Spot, a large white sand bottom anchorage that can accommodate at least a hundred boats. Adjacent to Big Majors Spot is Pig Beach where *wild* pigs live and roam and wait for visiting yachties to come and feed them lettuce and apples. I heard that the pigs are actually owned by a local farmer who is delighted that the pigs get fed, not by him. I did my part, I grabbed my stalk of wilted celery and some sweet potatoes and raced to the beach in the dinghy to feed these guys. The two larger pigs swim out to the dinghy and open wide and wait for you to chuck the food in. It’s an absolute hoot.

The other big draw to Staniel Cay is the Thunderball Grotto. This is a small rock island that is hollow, essentially a cave (where the James Bond movie Thunderball was filmed, apparently). It has the highest concentration of a very wide variety of fish that I, albeit a snorkelling newbie, have ever seen. We did the Grotto twice and I would have liked to stay a third day and do it again, but like the Johnny Depp sighting, that was not meant to be.
Next stop was Black Point. More of a utilitarian stop. The anchorage was beautiful. White sand bottom and one hundred boats anchored there. Black Points’ claim to fame is that it has the best laundry facilities in all of the islands. You have to appreciate that as cruisers, this is a big deal. We have seen some pretty scummy Laundromats. The Black Point facility was clean and had free and good wifi. Ida, the owner, will even cut your hair for $15 bucks (I did not partake). And she matches the going rate for laundry at $7 / load.

The waters of the Bahamas are a million shades of blue and absolutely crystal clear. It’s difficult to describe or capture in a photo. We have been on passages from one island to another and our depth sounder has read 65 feet and we can still clearly see the bottom. The other night we were upping anchor at midnite to make a night passage. The anchor chain (the nautical word is “rode”) had wrapped around a rock when we changed direction due to a wind shift. At first, I freaked out (Guillaume, calm captain, as always). But with the use of our spotlight we were able to see the anchor rode on the bottom 25’ down, in the total darkness. Guillaume was able to maneuver the boat to unwrap the chain from the around the rock so we could lift anchor. It’s gonna be awful hard to go back to anchoring on Lake Ontario, where you can’t see anything. You just fire out the anchor and hope for the best, and pray that you don’t end up having to dive the murky depths for a retrieval exercise because you are snagged on something.

Our next and final stop on the Exumas was George Town.

Stay tuned (and stay warm)!