Friday, January 30,2025 to Friday, February 7, 2025
Big Majors Spot to George Town, Bahama, Exumas
63 nautical miles (72 statute miles)
Big Major Spot, Staniel Cay and Thunderball Grotto
We stayed a few days anchored with +50 other boats in the very protected Big Majors Spot anchorage. It’s in close proximity to Staniel Cay (1.5-mile dinghy ride) and the actual “Spot” is known for its “Pig Beach.” We don’t get too excited for the pigs, but we did go visit them once to say we did. They will swim out to your dinghy to get any food you might have. We did not bring any, so they quickly lost interest (which was fine with us). One afternoon we circumnavigated around Big Major Spot, which took us through a very short, but very narrow channel with a strong current at Fowl Cay. It is supposedly deep enough for a monohull to get through for those brave enough to attempt it. Unfortunately, during our stay here, we overheard a distress call from a sailboat that ended up on the reef between Staniel Cay and Little Majors Spot. The currents around here are no joke.
Staniel Cay is a great spot with a nice restaurant/bar in the form of the Staniel Cay Yacht Club. We used this as our land base of operations for the days we were there. We branched from there to pick up some groceries, walk, visit the dump, and have a couple of meals at the club. Us being frugal, trash disposal was free if you carry it to the landfill; so being engineers, we were interested in how they handled their refuse. We knew they burned all their trash, but we like to see how the sausage was made (and for a little reminder our trash just doesn’t just wink out of existence when you toss it away) so we took the walk. Was as expected knowing there is not much land to dispose of trash.
On Saturday we visited the infamous Thunderball Grotto where a James Bond film (you know the name) was made. Although we heard it is best to swim the Grotto in slack low tide, we arrived close to high tide. Stronger than expected current, sharp rocks, made our trip a little challenging. Sondra cut her ankle as we approached a central pool behind some rocks, and her hands had several small nicks as she fended from the sharp walls. We were the only people in the Grotto, which made us a little leery. High tide covered a lot of the openings, and possibly the air pockets. Fearing getting swept into a tunnel without an air pocket, we clung to a rock and dipped our heads into the water to watch the fish swim around. We were lucky to have a brief moment of sunshine as we looked into the cave because this cave has a shaft in the middle, so when the sun came out, it illuminated the cave and all of the fish swimming around. We were surprised to see some coral species attempting to live at the grotto. A dinghy approached us as we got back into ours and asked how the grotto was. They told us that slack tide is defiantly the better time, and that there are ropes in the big central cave to pull yourself through.
As a side note, there have been many starry skies with low light pollution on these cloudless nights. We watched the ISS fly by on two consecutive nights.
Big Majors Spot towards George Town
First leg to Galliot Cut
Sunday, February 2, 8 am to 1 pm
22.4 nm
Enjoyed three hours of sailing close-hauled with intermittent rain. Anchored at Cave Cay on the south side of Galliot Cut. Before reaching the anchorage, we noticed that a sailboat had just come through the cut. When he saw us, he hailed us on the radio to give a warning of the difficulty that he had in the cut working his way through the ebb tide with the opposing east wind. Looking through the cut with binoculars there were very angry standing waves that we would not want to negotiate through. This made us glad we planned to exit the cut as close to slack low tide as possible in the morning.
We anchored off an isolated beach for the night. It was pretty but somewhat rolly due to the wrap around swell coming from the cut.
Second Leg to George Town
Monday, February 3, 6:30 a.m., to 2:30 p.m.
40.2 nm
Low tide was sometime around 5:30 a.m. and sunrise was at 6:45 a.m. on the morning of Monday, February 3, so we had the engine on early and began to weigh anchor around 6:30 a.m. With just an hour after low tide, the big crashing waves that we saw the previous afternoon were gone, however there was a strong incoming current already. At one point, the engine was running at 2,500 rpms, the speed log was reading 7 knots (thru water), but our speed over the ground had dropped down to 2.8 knots! That is over 4 knots of current. At least it was not less than one and we still had some rpms in the bank if needed. Once clear of the cut, the waves became very tall for the first mile or so offshore. Three miles offshore, we turned south, and motor sailed close-hauled in more comfortable seas. Winds varied throughout the day between 7 and 17 knots, and we maintained speeds between 5 & 6 knots to reach the entrance to Elizabeth Harbour with the good sunlight.
With the first cut being a mentally tiring event, the entrance through Conch Cay Cut was more of a physical effort. We entered this cut close to max ebb tide, but at least this cut was much wider than Galliot and there was not a lot of current (just a lot of shoals with waves crashing about). This allowed a little more room for error when it was difficult to keep the boat on course. About the time we reached Monument Beach the seas were comfortable again and the autopilot was used until reaching the Sand Dollar mooring field to the south of the infamous Chat n’ Chill. It was nice to have the mooring ball waiting for us after passing through the two cuts at the end of an eight-hour trip. We decided to pick up a mooring ball for the first week to get our bearings of the area since there is an overload of activities to do in George Town.
George Town aka Georgetown aka “Chicken Harbour”
After several weeks of fairly constant motion, it is nice to sit a bit and spend time in a single place with no schedule or need to move on. We will probably be in the George Town area and/or Long Island area (20 miles east) for the next few weeks.
So why George Town (or is it Georgetown)? George Town is considered one of the main cruiser destinations in the entire Bahamas. As of this writing, there are over 300 cruising boats scattered throughout a rather small area. George Town and Stocking Island have pretty much everything a cruiser needs (groceries, laundry, fuel, hardware stores, restaurants, bars, and a very active cruising community).
Every morning at 8 am there is a Cruiser’s net on channel 72 of on the VHF where all the day’s activities for the community are enumerated. The net also provides a platform to welcome new arrivals, farewell to departures, and common place to troubleshoot boat issues and to discuss upcoming activities on the calendar. It’s like grown up summer camp.
George Town also has the name of "Chicken Harbor". This location is typically considered the southern boundary of many cruising in the the Bahamas for a season. Many cruisers take the trek to George Town and drop anchor for two months before they start heading back north to the USA. The reason for this is once you head south of George Town, you are on your own since the islands are much less populated until you get to the Turks and Caicos (around 250 miles). Many of the islands from here are uninhabited and it is a very east trek into the trade winds from here. So, the name "Chicken Harbor" means a lot of cruisers are nervous about heading further south and east from this location.
Great article about George Town
Monday - So we came into the anchorage Monday afternoon and grabbed a mooring ball and since we have been on the boat for a couple of days we dinghied into land to the famous Chat N’ Chill. It’s a central social location for cruisers and is about 2,000 ft from our boat. Food, drink, and games can be had every day from 11 am to 7 pm.
Tuesday – hiked from Honeymoon Beach to the Monument, 2-mile round trip. Got into the water before taking dinghy over to George Town. We took a walk to get to know the area, went to grocery store, ate at Island Boy Café. The dinghy dock in the town is quite full during the day (see pic). Note that it’s about a one-mile dingy ride to the town itself across Elizabeth Harbour. I think we will be taking the route quite a bit.
Wednesday-Dinghied into town and did laundry, walked around, and visited the Exuma tourism office. We had lunch on the boat and then went to Chat n’ Chill for an early chicken dinner. There was volleyball, other beach games and dancing while we were there.
Thursday- Getting in the community routine a bit. After the 8 am cruiser’s net, Sondra went to yoga at the beach and then we went on a hike around the area and found a very secluded beach on the sound side of Stocking Island with a lot of cruiser artwork along to the walk.
Friday-After some morning boat chores and Sondra doing some remote work for a few hours, we went out for lunch and took walks in town and on Stocking Island. Had a nice quite evening on the boat.
Post # 25-6; See link below for previous post, # 25-5 and the next post # 25-7
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