The Abacos Islands, Bahamas. Aug & Sept 2010
After a couple of months of no charters during the low season in the Windies, we were fully relaxed and starting to feel the pinch financially, and so agreed to do a season in the Bahamas…
After a confusing start regarding work visas and red tape we finally made our way via Puerto Rico (managing to fit in a fantastic night with our friends Matt and Mel from the BVI who happened to be hurricanising their boat Free Ingwe in PR at the same time) and Miami to the beautiful town of Marsh Harbour in the Abacos.
We went straight onto our 2nd boat and new ‘home’ for the next few months a 4600 Leapoard called Brilliant. Luckily for us the current crew who we were replacing temporarily were still around for a couple of days to help us get orientated before we went full steam into chartering again. Imagine our surprise then when we discovered that Rob and Becky had not only also just come fresh from a ski season in La Tania, Trois Vallees but had worked in the chalet directly opposite ours and we had even taken ski lessons together – talk about a small world!
They were kind enough to give us a whirlwind (in the loosest terms – we were soon to realise there is very little wind to be had in the Abacos!) tour of their favourite anchorages and watering holes of Hopetown, Man O War Cay, Sandy Cay, Treasure Cay, Whale Cay, Guana Island and many more. We immediately fell in love with the vibrancy and colours and sheer friendliness of the people, not to mention the relative ‘civilisation’ compared to the rough edges of the Windward Islands. However our hearts still very much lay back ‘down island’ so we assured Rob & Becky that we weren’t going to steal their jobs and this was only a temporary assignment for us.
The Bahamas is completely different to anywhere we’ve been or sailed before and as already mentioned sailing wasn’t actually high up on the agenda as there was very little wind, certainly not enough to power our hulk of a boat alone. The water is also incredibly shallow with the fathometer often reading ‘0’ feet which was a bit disconcerting at first. We would often see tracks in the sea grass that lay over most of the sandy bottom where previous boats had grounded and just powered on through! The upside of this was the absolutely stunning colours of the sea and coral. You almost didn’t need to snorkel or dive to appreciate the underwater life.
The snorkelling was without a doubt the best we have ever done – including the red sea – and we were a bit gutted to realise that we needn’t have bothered paying for all the excess baggage of bringing our dive gear with us as most sites were so shallow paying for a tank was just a waste of money.
That said we were disappointed with the fishing that the Abacos is famed for and didn’t catch a single thing on the 3 months we were there. It seems that either we were doing something very wrong or you needed to go outside of the Sea of Abacos and into the rougher deeper water which we weren’t prepared to do in the ‘fragile’ condition that Brilliant was in due to previous local skippers (not Rob and Becky we hasten to add!) nose diving her into various reefs!
On the other hand we found that conch was plentiful and totally legal to catch, so with an abundance of advice from our friends Faith and Jeff who had also spent time chartering the Abacos and were great fishers, we set about trying to extract them from their shells – again with no success! After that we made very good friends with a local one toothed fisherman called Albury and his fantastic back yard fish market and let him do all the hard work for us!
After a very busy season and meeting some amazing guests and having a lot of laughs along the way, our time there started to draw to an end. However mother nature had a last trick up it’s sleeve for us and Hurricane Earl made it’s appearance further down the island chain, doing a lot of damage in the BVI on it’s way. Although it wasn’t directly aimed for us the whole base was still put into full hurricane operation…with the exception of us!
We had a charter booked for about the time Earl was supposed to pass by and we were told in no uncertain terms that unless the flight didn’t land we were still expected to go out! To say we were apprehensive was an understatement, but the flight landed and out we went. Once again lady luck seemed to be shining on us as we were the only boat crazy enough to be out sailing in the ‘rage’ as they call it and the guests had the time of their lives as they were keen sailors they would have been disappointed to come any other week and find the usual lack of wind.
However it goes to prove that you should never count your chickens as on the very last day we took a direct hit of lightening. We’ve never heard a bang so loud with the accompanying flash of brilliant white we knew immediately we had been hit. Luckily our guests were still in bed and although fairly shaken up everyone was unhurt, and amazingly the only damage to the boat was all the electronics failing. This may not seem too lucky, but the previous week we had been shown photos of another Moorings boat that got hit the previous season, burning to the waterline in 3 minutes, so yes we counted ourselves VERY lucky!
So after a final bout of excitement we sadly bid farewell to the Abacos and headed back to St Lucia and the Grenadines for the beginning of their season.
Read MoreAfter a confusing start regarding work visas and red tape we finally made our way via Puerto Rico (managing to fit in a fantastic night with our friends Matt and Mel from the BVI who happened to be hurricanising their boat Free Ingwe in PR at the same time) and Miami to the beautiful town of Marsh Harbour in the Abacos.
We went straight onto our 2nd boat and new ‘home’ for the next few months a 4600 Leapoard called Brilliant. Luckily for us the current crew who we were replacing temporarily were still around for a couple of days to help us get orientated before we went full steam into chartering again. Imagine our surprise then when we discovered that Rob and Becky had not only also just come fresh from a ski season in La Tania, Trois Vallees but had worked in the chalet directly opposite ours and we had even taken ski lessons together – talk about a small world!
They were kind enough to give us a whirlwind (in the loosest terms – we were soon to realise there is very little wind to be had in the Abacos!) tour of their favourite anchorages and watering holes of Hopetown, Man O War Cay, Sandy Cay, Treasure Cay, Whale Cay, Guana Island and many more. We immediately fell in love with the vibrancy and colours and sheer friendliness of the people, not to mention the relative ‘civilisation’ compared to the rough edges of the Windward Islands. However our hearts still very much lay back ‘down island’ so we assured Rob & Becky that we weren’t going to steal their jobs and this was only a temporary assignment for us.
The Bahamas is completely different to anywhere we’ve been or sailed before and as already mentioned sailing wasn’t actually high up on the agenda as there was very little wind, certainly not enough to power our hulk of a boat alone. The water is also incredibly shallow with the fathometer often reading ‘0’ feet which was a bit disconcerting at first. We would often see tracks in the sea grass that lay over most of the sandy bottom where previous boats had grounded and just powered on through! The upside of this was the absolutely stunning colours of the sea and coral. You almost didn’t need to snorkel or dive to appreciate the underwater life.
The snorkelling was without a doubt the best we have ever done – including the red sea – and we were a bit gutted to realise that we needn’t have bothered paying for all the excess baggage of bringing our dive gear with us as most sites were so shallow paying for a tank was just a waste of money.
That said we were disappointed with the fishing that the Abacos is famed for and didn’t catch a single thing on the 3 months we were there. It seems that either we were doing something very wrong or you needed to go outside of the Sea of Abacos and into the rougher deeper water which we weren’t prepared to do in the ‘fragile’ condition that Brilliant was in due to previous local skippers (not Rob and Becky we hasten to add!) nose diving her into various reefs!
On the other hand we found that conch was plentiful and totally legal to catch, so with an abundance of advice from our friends Faith and Jeff who had also spent time chartering the Abacos and were great fishers, we set about trying to extract them from their shells – again with no success! After that we made very good friends with a local one toothed fisherman called Albury and his fantastic back yard fish market and let him do all the hard work for us!
After a very busy season and meeting some amazing guests and having a lot of laughs along the way, our time there started to draw to an end. However mother nature had a last trick up it’s sleeve for us and Hurricane Earl made it’s appearance further down the island chain, doing a lot of damage in the BVI on it’s way. Although it wasn’t directly aimed for us the whole base was still put into full hurricane operation…with the exception of us!
We had a charter booked for about the time Earl was supposed to pass by and we were told in no uncertain terms that unless the flight didn’t land we were still expected to go out! To say we were apprehensive was an understatement, but the flight landed and out we went. Once again lady luck seemed to be shining on us as we were the only boat crazy enough to be out sailing in the ‘rage’ as they call it and the guests had the time of their lives as they were keen sailors they would have been disappointed to come any other week and find the usual lack of wind.
However it goes to prove that you should never count your chickens as on the very last day we took a direct hit of lightening. We’ve never heard a bang so loud with the accompanying flash of brilliant white we knew immediately we had been hit. Luckily our guests were still in bed and although fairly shaken up everyone was unhurt, and amazingly the only damage to the boat was all the electronics failing. This may not seem too lucky, but the previous week we had been shown photos of another Moorings boat that got hit the previous season, burning to the waterline in 3 minutes, so yes we counted ourselves VERY lucky!
So after a final bout of excitement we sadly bid farewell to the Abacos and headed back to St Lucia and the Grenadines for the beginning of their season.
