Leaving Georgetown

(Originally published in 2012)

Georgetown, on the island of Great Exuma at the southern end of the Exuma island group in the Bahamas, is not simply a good provisioning stop, or one of the more complete stopovers for conducting business, flying in and out of the country, or for mechanical repairs. It is one of the more practical locations for leaving a boat at anchor (preferably with someone watching over the vessel) while one flies out of the country for a few days or more. In fact, Georgetown is considered to be the endpoint, a destination in and of itself, for scads of East Coast snowbirds who sail down to spend the winter in the warmth of the Bahamian sun. Activities abound – Junkanoo (last week of December), a Mardi Gras-like traditional island festival, the annual National Family Island Regatta (late April), a huge event that attracts cruisers from far and wide who often even participate in crewing on some of the local boats, beach volleyball and other athletic activities, church on the beach, dominoes and card games, and lots more. There is no shortage of things to do in Georgetown and, as an added bonus, while one is homebasing at one of the many anchorages that the island has to offer, quick daytrips and overnighters to the surrounding islands offer great sailing and remote anchorages that one can enjoy for a few days of pleasant anchoring before hightailing it back to the convenient shelter of Elizabeth Harbour prior to the arrival of the next significant cold front. In addition to all of this, Georgetown and Elizabeth Harbour serve as an excellent jumping off point for the more adventuresome who choose to roam further afield such as to the out islands of the southeast Bahamas or the Turks and Caicos, or those heading south into the Ragged Islands. In other words, for the first time cruiser especially, Georgetown is definitely a ‘must do.’

We simply arrived in the wrong frame of mind. In retrospect, for us there really was no basis for our schedule concerns as we were coming down through the Exumas, but we came into Georgetown in something more than an “island time” frame of mind. So far, things had gone less than smoothly for a significant portion of our trip and, never having done this before, we were beginning to wonder about our timing. The plan to cross from Miami to the Bahamas in December had taken a hit when we were waylaid in Portsmouth, Virginia with major engine problems. Then, since we were already off schedule anyway, I decided to attend my annual veterinary conferences in Orlando in January. So the planned December crossing had metamorphosed into early February. When we crossed from Miami to Bimini we inadvertently fell in with a pack of boats that was headed straight through to Nassau without even giving thought to anything else. As a result, without even realizing what we were doing, we sailed right on past the Berry Islands, which we had heard such great things about. At that point, when Annie unexpectedly had to fly back to the States from Nassau for a couple weeks, we fell even further ‘behind.’ Leaving Nassau, we spent a couple of days riding out what turned out to be quite a vicious front at Allens Cay and then, bypassing an intended stop at Normans Cay, hit the park at Warderick Wells Cay for a couple days before heading on down to Staniel Cay. At Staniel we celebrated the annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities with corned beef and cabbage and cruising friends while anchored between Big and Little Major Spot as we rode out another passing front. It was at Staniel Cay where our little cruising entourage, with whom we had traveled intermittently from the time we all met up on Bimini, finally split up and went our separate ways.

So far, with the exception of our little adventure riding out the front at Allens Cay, the Bahamas had been pretty uneventful. We had heard about the problems with tidal currents along the Exuma chain, the tidal “rages” that can develop as the shallow water on the banks funnels its way off the banks through the cuts and into the deeper water of Exuma Sound as the tide falls, but we hadn’t seen any such thing. Since the shallow water on the banks was going to become even shallower as we headed south, we had decided with our deep 6 ½ foot draft to go through the cut at Staniel Cay and head down the Exuma chain on the “outside” in the deep water of the Sound rather than continuing along the banks. The water out in Exuma sound is measured in thousands of feet as opposed to the water on the banks, which ranges from feet to virtually none at all. Therefore we decided that before we were going to head through the cut we should check it out to see if there were any unexpected or hidden dangers. It all looked good on our Explorer Chartsbut, as is our nature, we wanted to get an up close and personal look at it. We grabbed our snorkel gear and our handheld depth sounder and jumped in the dinghy. A fairly extensive evaluation of the cut using our depth sounder and doing some exploratory snorkeling revealed a pretty straightforward situation: lots of depth and width with no evidence of any surprises as long as we stayed a reasonable distance from the sides. So when it came time to yank the anchor and take off, we headed out through the cut in the predawn greyness and motored our way down Exuma Sound trailing behind us a rigged ballyhoo, purchased at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club in hopes of landing ourselves a tasty pelagic fish. But no such luck. It was a halcyon day and we drank in the bluewater beauty of Exuma Sound as we motorsailed our way down the island chain. We gave consideration to making a stop along the way, perhaps at Black Point on Guana Cay or at Big Farmers Cay, but our accumulating momentum carried the day, and by mid-afternoon we found ourselves carefully negotiating the convoluted entrance channel into Elizabeth Harbour. We dropped the hook a quarter mile or so offshore from the Peace and Plenty, one of the popular cruiser restaurants we had heard about from our snowbird friends.

Cruisers coming to Georgetown have a tendency to spend days or even weeks here. So much so that Bruce Van Zant, in his Gentlemens Guide to Passages South refers to Georgetown as “chicken harbor,” a reference to the intimidation of what is yet to come for those intending to travel on down to the Caribbean from here. When you leave the coastline of the southeast U.S., once you have “made the crossing” and are in the Bahamas, the islands tend to be comfortably close together. Daysails of two or three or five miles are not uncommon as you hop from one anchorage to the next and a jump of ten or fifteen miles often seems quite a long stretch when traveling from one point to another, perhaps to one of the larger destination harbors. However, when leaving Georgetown for points south and east, the distances become significantly longer and the harbors of refuge become increasingly less hospitable. Thus as a wannabe Caribbean cruiser sits at anchor in Elizabeth Harbour enjoying the local festivities and begins to evaluate the uncertainties of the upcoming trip, suddenly the prospect of longer distance cruising becomes outweighed by all of the activities immediately at hand, and for many cruisers the intimidation and uncertainty of these looming distances loses out to a “maybe next year” mentality.

Annie and I did our provisioning – the first significant supply stop since Nassau. We visited the Exuma Market to restock the larder and took care of our internet needs at a local internet service provider. We filled our fuel tanks, changed our engine oil and filter, and I managed to find time to visit a “meeting” of what was referred to as the “southbound cruisers” on the beach out on Stocking Island along the eastern edge of Elizabeth Harbour. Here I found that there really wasn’t much of any value at all. Other than a bad case of the blind leading the blind, it served only as a means for a few of those who were intent upon actually heading south to link up with some likeminded folks. Among the “educational” offerings: a vigorous debate on how to hide your firearms aboard your boat so that you could get into the various islands without declaring them. Another impromptu seminar was being offered by a cruiser returning from the islands who had managed to travel all the way from the U.S. to the South America mainland and back without ever checking into or out of any of the countries along the way. That kind of advice I certainly had no interest in. Hopefully he didn’t pick up too many followers. All in all, the only good coming from this apparent fiasco was that I did manage to make contact with a cruiser who had the complete set of CYC charts for the Caribbean on paper and was willing to allow me to make copies of them (so that we could have them as backup to our computer disk version), in exchange for providing him with a few of our more exotic paper charts of the South American coast. There was an engineering firm in Georgetown that owned a gigantic copy machine designed to copy architectural blueprints. They allowed cruisers to make full-size copies of sailing charts for just a few bucks each, which made an excellent way to keep backup charts on hand. The paper was not waterproof or very durable, but for backup purposes they were fine. In addition, our contact with him led to a later meeting with some others who were intent upon getting down to the Caribbean.

We hung out in Georgetown for a total of four days – not a particularly impressive tenure when compared to most cruisers’ visits. In retrospect I feel we should have hung out for a couple of weeks or longer. We should have given ourselves a chance to get a feel for the local environment, to make a couple of short sails off to the surrounding islands where we could experience cruising, anchoring, going ashore and exploring, and all of the entertainment that that kind of encounter provides. Those are the things that we seek as cruisers. Those are the reasons we cruise. Instead we spent those couple days ashore having lunch at the Peace and Plentyand taking care of our preparations for the next leg. After all, we didn’t want to miss that next weather window.

We planned upon leaving Georgetown to finally make some stops and enjoy ourselves at some of the out islands – Rum Cay, Conception, maybe even San Salvador for a visit to the Columbus landing site, and of course Mayaguana had to be on the list – after all, we were nearing the end of our trip through the Bahamas and we hadn’t yet done any real “cruising.” After three days in Georgetown and getting everything done we had planned on, we pulled our anchor aboard and headed south, out to the Fowl Cay cut where we staged ourselves for an early morning departure on the next leg of our voyage – easterly over the north end of Long Island and off to the islands of the southeast Bahamas.