The Lower Far Bahamas

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March 16, 2025

Yes, we made it to the Bahamas, and the seas and weather were amazingly cooperative all in all!

We knew we’d have some rougher weather leaving Port Antonio as we left right after a front came through. But things calmed. There were, I believe, 3 places we had to cross currents and these always make things a bit rockier. We are so gun shy now with rocky weather that as soon as it starts to get a bit rougher, we get nervous. But, I’m starting to learn how to read the currents and how they will impact us.

As the sun came up, things became very calm. Yeah! The Windward Passage can be notoriously difficult for a northbound passage as it almost always has a north to south wind. Our passage was timed for a very calm weather window through here.
We have nearly circumnavigated Cuba but had never seen it. I did see lights from Guantanamo during the night, but our only daytime view at dawn. A fuzzy image, depicting my brain at the time and the challenges of the country. We glad we finally got a glimpse. We really wanted to go, lots of cruisers do, most from non-US countries but even a few from the US. The Cubans dont mind. We always chickened out.

Inagua, Bahamas

The most southern island in the Bahamas is Inagua. Just north of the Windward Passage and a landing point for those headed from the Caribbean north and a jumping off point for those headed to the Caribbean. Most folks just check in or out of the Bahamas here and don’t spend any time. There are only a few hundred people living here. A true outback.

We spend one night on the Government dock where we checked in. It is a difficult dock, worse than any we dealt with on the St. Lawrence, and there were some challenging ones. Surge into the small harbour, poor and few bollards to tie to and only a few piers that one could use to keep the boat off the dock. However, the anchorage outside the harbour is known to be VERY rolly, thus we opted for the harbour for one night so we could visit the island.

We spent a days as there is a Morton Salt facility here and 60,000 West Indian Flamingos.

There are 60,000 breeding West Indian Flamingos on Inagua. Apparently the flamingos were declining in population but they have now stabilized the population. It is breeding season and thus, most are on the far end of the island and cannot be visited. We saw maybe 30 or so, apparently juvenal males who stay out of the breeding action and do what your males do, hang out on their own.

I’d never thought about it, but the Bahamas has been a big spot for salt production. Morton on Inagua and previously Diamond on Long Island. Most of the salt produced here is for road salt but employees around 100 folks. If we remember correctly, it takes more than a year for the water to evaporate out of the ponds, of which their are hundreds. The ponds are only maybe a foot deep. Obviously, rains and hurricanes don’t help with this process.
I never quite understood this part; there are lots of smaller ponds that have nothing to do with the salt “factory” but they too have lots of salt along the edge. We collected some salt crystals clumps here. Sitting on a plate on in the cockpit of our boat, they started to melt in the humidity. A small part is now in a baggy. The rest is in the ocean.
As close as we could get to the piles of salt. They bring in large freighters to carry out the salt.
After returning from our tour of the park and salt ponds, we hopped on our bikes for a ride around the small town, Matthew Town, and down to the lighthouse at the tip of the island. It is open and one can just wander in and up the spiral staircase.
The views are spectacular, but DO NOT lean on the railing. Jim did so and it WAS loose! No OSHA here, or soon in the US either! (sorry, I could not help myself!!!)
The steps near the top were quite steep. Further down, a few were missing/loose/broken. But you could work around them. This is a tourist attraction for the town. The head of tourism suggested we visit the light house.
It was oh so picturesque!
We did stop into the small general store. How fun to see Alaska evaporated milk. This seemed to be popular in several stores we’ve seen. It seems so out of place here.

We could NOT take another day on the dock, so when we returned to the boat, we headed up to Man of War Bay, a short two hour run, for the night.

A pretty spot at Man of War. Still a bit rolly so we deployed the floppers which worked like a champ.
The floppers deployed. I don’t ahve a polarizing filter for my phone (or big camera for that matter) so was playing around with my sunglasses and phone. Thus, the funny colors in the sky. But the water is so pretty!

We planned to head to the Acklins and Long Cay, the next islands up in the Bahamas chain the next day. We tucked into Man Of War Bay for the night. In looking at the weather, another front was headed in and there are not many/any places to hide from the weather in the Acklins or Long Cay. Darn, we decide to do another 24 hour run up to Long Island (not the Cay) as there is better protection.

We had a bright moon, clear skies and fairly calm seas which was much appreciated. The Bahamas is known for skinny water (i.e., shallow) and I was a bit nervous navigating it in the dark after having lived for so long in deep (1000 – 15,000 feet) water. We dropped the hook right outside the marked route on the charts for a couple hours rest until the sun came up. Then into the anchorage ahead of the approaching storm.

Long Island, Bahamas

Long Island is about 80 miles long, but only about 4 miles wide at the most. When we arrived, there was, as I mentioned, a front coming through and thus we spent our first two days hunkered on the boat. That was OK as we needed/wanted so down time after two fairly recent long passages. The storm passed and it was time to get the dinghy down and do some exploring.

Every time we arrive at a new anchorage, Tori is very interested to see where we are. She NEVER looks out while we are underway.
Rincon rode out two storms in this spot. She liked it here!

We did some general looking around near Thompson Bay where we were anchored, bought some groceries and got haircuts. The next day we managed to rented a car. A very hard proposition as the owner of the rental place, Olivia, had died a week earlier after a month in the hospital in Nassau and her funeral was the following day. Shockingly, her husband rented us a car. Long Island only has about 4000 residents and everyone knows everyone. We felt bad for intruding on their grief but I guess business needs to continue.

We stopped by several abandoned churches. we’ve found the Bahamas tens to be fairly religious. Mostly Anglican (not surprising) and Catholic. Not so much evangelical at least on Long Island. This church was built in 1940. It did not fair well in Hurricane Irma, a Cat 5 hurricane in 2017. This Anglican church was abandoned and rebuilt down the road.
Although there were no doors or windows left, there was still some items in the church such as this cross on the alter.
This statue remained in the corner of one room. There was no graffiti or destruction beyond storms and abandonment. The church was respected.
These large moths (size of my palm) had invaded the window screens. There were remnants of maybe a hundred throughout the church.
We visited Deans Blue Hole. It is apparently the 2nd deepest saltwater blue hole at 202 m (over 660 feet) deep. We did not go in, just viewed from the shore. we surely were not going to dive, but would have snorkeled around but it was late in the day.
A German group there showed us what happens when you splash the water along the shore. Look closely at the water drops looking dark blue. A reflection/refraction/??? into the water. Very cool!
Back to churches. This is apparently one of the oldest churches in the Bahamas. Built by the Catholics in the 1600’s, later became Anglican. Long abandoned.
A pretty relic of a church.

We really enjoyed Long island. The people truly seemed to like having visitors. Sadly, we spoke to more than one resident who said it was so hard to get to Long Island that it really hurt tourism. It takes a couple days to get there and thus most people don’t want to spend 4 days of a week vacation in travel. The government has been promising them a longer runway so they can bring in planes directly from the US for 20 years. Not likely to happen soon.

The local dinghy dock. There are a couple ladders to climb up, but they you need to move your dinghy over so other folks can get off their boats. We saw turtles swimming around here several times.
We took a dinghy ride around the corner of the bay, and had a little picnic on this protected beach.
Much of the shore of these southern islands are rocky limestone and not very hospitable to landing a dinghy.
After our beach picnic, we too a short hike to one of the many limestone caves on Long Island.
Jim only liked the parts where he did not have to duck walk.
I went a bit farther into the caves but turned back as Jim did not want to follow me to the second cave.

Interestingly, The Bahamas became an independent nation, part of the British Commonwealth in 1973. They did not get electricity in the island (except for personal generators) until 1980. Paved roads after than and some semblance of a water system. The have come a long way in recent times.

Although there are now modern conveniences, they still hold onto tradition. We saw quite a few goat herds and sheep as well.

We have moved from Long Island to Moriah National Park on Exuma, an island about 40 NM northwest of Long Island. The winds were rather strong at 15 – 20 knots, but they are on our stern so the trip was actually quite pleasant. We’ve moved from the country to the city as the people on Long Island like to say. But, we are outside of town in a pretty quiet anchorage with good wind protection and easy access to town. We’ll be here for a few days.

On our mooring ball in our very protected anchorage in The Exumas.

Comments

The Lower Far Bahamas — 2 Comments

  1. Wonderful photographs. I love the view through the church window with one shutter. Glad you’re enjoying your adventures.

  2. Ahoy, Mark Chalom here. Man of war was an old stomping ground for me. I met a David Wright who was restoring a 56′ William H. Asbury a ship built in 63. The hurricane wiped out the island and I have not heard anything more about David or the ship. Enjoy your travels, watch the charts. Bahamas are only 10′ deep.