Saying good bye to The Bahamas

After almost six months of living on Billy Ruff’n in The Bahamas, it’s time to move on to our next adventure but we wanted to get a final taste of some of the cays that we missed on the way down the Exumas. So, on April 3rd we left George Town for Farmer’s Cay, approximately 40 miles north. On a sunny, blustery, puffy cloud day like many others, with the wind on the nose, after 6 hours of pounding into the waves, we arrived at the rocky & rolling Farmers Cut. Once inside, we tried anchoring off of Little Farmers Yacht Club but the bottom was scraped rock, so we took a mooring. We called the Club to make dinner reservations and they suggested that we order ahead, which we were happy to have done when we arrived for dinner at 7pm and another boating couple had already been waiting for an hour for their meal. We sat down and immediately got served a tasty and traditional Bahamian meal of chicken, rice & beans (which they call “peas”).

Next stop on our way north was Cambridge Cay, approximately 30 miles of mostly motor sailing. This cay provides a beautiful anchorage in the Exuma Land & Sea Park where they also have moorings for $27/night. Since there was a lot of current, in a relatively tight spot and all types of boats with different swing patterns, we thought a mooring ball was the best way to go. We were proven right when we found ourselves perpendicular to a 56 foot trawler in the middle of the night!

We stayed in Cambridge Cay two nights so that we could spend a day exploring. We took the dinghy past Rocky Dundas (with too much chop to snorkel) to Compass Cay to see Rachel’s Bath, which is a pretty spot on the north end of the island that, in high tide, lets ocean water in through the rocks to fill a deep and calm, sandy bottom pool of sun warmed salty water that the crowds don’t get to. We were told, however, that Taylor Swift was seen there this year!

Another long motor sail and swirly cut and we were further north in Highborne Cay. We anchored off the western shore and took the dinghy in for a very good, but expensive dinner at Xuma Restaurant in a very nice, well kept high-end resort. The rather large boats at the dock looked like they spend their season there.

The last leg of our trip in The Bahamas was to Rose Island, off Nassau, where we anchored overnight near what I dubbed “Gillian’s island” before entering the harbor and taking a slip at Nassau Harbor Club & Marina. We came here to pick up crew, provision and to enjoy the amenities before our crossing to Florida. The marina has a nice pool, restaurant and laundry facilities and an excellent location close to a drug store, grocery store, marine store, Domino’s and Starbucks… good for reorienting us to the US of A. 

Allen, from s/v Woza Moya, joined us on Friday, April 8th and we enjoyed a day of sightseeing before setting sail. We walked to the Queen’s Stairway, where the local kids were taking graduation pictures and found an excellent brewery called Rip Tyd, where we sampled flights of their latest craft and ate barbecue from the stand next door. The owner, from Canada, who had been in Nassau for 30 years, regaled us with stories about how she found a Bahamian sailboat abandoned in Farmers Cay and shipped it to Nassau to serve as her bar in the brewery.

On my birthday, April 10th, we treated ourselves to an English breakfast at The Nassau Cricket Club before shoving off for the 190 mile trip to Florida. On the way, we taught Allan how to protect his head from the hard dodger and other obstacles on our boat and he taught us how to catch a big fish! We had an excellent sail most of the way, only turning on the motor for a couple hours in the middle of the night and made it to West Palm Beach in 27 hours, at an average speed of 7.1 knots… not bad for our last sail in this beautiful place with the shallow seas, called The Bahamas!