BAHAMAS - GEORGETOWN

Circled in red is the Georgetown area, which is what this blog covers. The red dots are where we have anchored so far and the red "X" is where we are now, on the east side of San Salvador. Over the next five weeks we should have the wind, waves and currents mostly with us as we work our way northwest through the Bahamas, then mostly north to Virginia.

Georgetown is the capital of the Exumas. It is located on Great Exuma Island and has a population of around 2,500. The first settlers on Great Exuma were the Lucayan Indians who in the 8th century came to the Bahamas from Cuba and/or Hispanola (the island now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic) via dug out canoes. After Columbus, the Spanish enslaved all of the Lucayan and took them to Hispanola. This left the Bahamas pretty much uninhabited for 150 years. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries Pirates used Georgetown's large natural harbor. After the Revolutionary War British loyalists who left their homes in Virginia, North and South Carolina founded Georgetown when they came to the island with their slaves to establish cotton plantations. During World War II the deep five mile long by one mile wide harbor was a refitting base for British and US naval vessels. Now it's a favorite spot for cruisers plus it has resorts, beaches, fishing, diving/snorkeling, sailing regattas, etc. However, with Covid still being a thing, it's pretty quiet other than some scaled down cruiser activities.

A few years before I started cruising I followed a few YouTube channels by people who were already cruising. One of the places they all went to was Georgetown, Bahamas. I guess pre-Covid there would be 450+/- boats in this relatively protected harbor. During the week we were there I don't think there were ever much more than a hundred boats. Regardless, one of the places everyone goes to is the Chat N Chill restaurant/bar.

If you're interested, a couple YouTube channels you might want to check out are Sailing SV Delos, Sailing La Vagabonde, Gone with the Wynn's and Sailing Trio Travels. There are a bunch more too. We met the Trio Travels people in both Mexico and Guatemala. 

Unless you're in places that tourists/cruisers hang out, the Bahamas really doesn't have a lot of bars. Actually from what I've seen there it really isn't a drinking culture.

Back to Chat N Chill. They have a huge centrally located property with a great beach, picnic tables, shade,

volley ball courts

and venues for everything from jam sessions, yoga, AA meetings, various boating related workshops, basket weaving, worship services, etc. 

The locals have created water taxi, boat cleaning, boat sitting, fuel/water/propane delivery, etc. businesses that cater to the cruisers.

The big harbor is called Elizabeth Harbor but Georgetown is accessed by dinghying under this little bridge and into little Lake Victoria.

Everyone docks their dinghy behind the grocery store. It's a fairly complete grocery but more expensive than most.

The purpose of our first trip into town was to get some groceries, extend our cruising permit and visas, as well as to just look around.

After several days without, gas had just been delivered to the town's sole gas station so there was a pretty good line. I think this is probably a regular thing.

When we received our original cruising permit in Bimini it was for 90 days and cost $300. Since they only offer 90 day and one year permits and since we'll be coming back next year on our way to the Eastern Caribbean, we went with the one year extension option for $500. Compared to everyplace we've been, except Belize, that's pretty expensive. In Honduras it would have cost like $25.

We also went to the Immigration Office to extend our visas but were told to do that online, which we did, at no charge. 

For the most part I can kind of take or leave veggies but Delana uses them ALL the time.

This is little Lake Victoria from opposite the bridge and dinghy dock.

Of course like everywhere, the Georgetown area is supplied by mailboats.

This is where they unload.

Once back to the boat, Delana had some butchering to do.

She also had to spin dry some lettuce.

The first time we went into town we dinghied and got absolutely soaked on the way back. So this time we took Starship and anchored much closer to the little bridge, so it was a short/dry dinghy ride to and from the dock. 

While in town we ran into Trish and Tom who we originally met in Roatan three years ago. As a matter of fact, when I sailed solo from Roatan to Guatemala they were my buddy boat. During that trip they followed Starship and kept an eye on her while I got some sleep. And if I would have gone off course, they could have waken me up with the alarm function on our VHF radios. I slept like a baby. 

After selling an invention in her 20's, Trish retired and raised her two kids on-board her boat as a single Mom. She's extensively sailed both the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas.

Trish and Tom had us follow them to their "secret" anchorage and boy was it cool. The charts show it as being too shallow but there was a couple feet more than we needed.

The water was the prettiest we had seen yet...and that's saying something!

There's this abandoned resort 

and just the two of us.

This was to be a big bucks ECO development, with single/multi-family residences, a resort/spa, marina and all the amenities. I guess it had an $800 million dollar budget. However, even though a lot of the infrastructure was already in place, it was a victim of the banking crisis and construction stopped in 2009. 

The palapa and grounds were still in great shape though.

Some of us even did yoga a couple days.

One day we went for a walk in search of plantation ruins and ran into a few of these guys. It was almost six inches across and pretty scary looking. It's called a Golden Silk Orb-weaver. Garments, for display only, have been made out of their gold-colored silk. It's supposedly harmless.

This is what's left of the Sir William Walker plantation home. Walker was a British Loyalist who came here in the late 1700s and built a stone house along with a botanical garden on Crab Cay. The trees and exotic plants were started from cuttings brought back to this area by Her Majesty’s ships that traveled throughout the Atlantic and Pacific - think HMS Bounty. The house was impressive, considering the effort involved in building a stone structure on an island-off-an-island in the 1700s. The site contained high stone walls, peaked entrance pillars and circular platforms for cannons to help defend them from  pirates.

This is the bay next to where we were anchored. It was to be a 300 boat marina. It had already been dredged deep enough for mega-yachts which is no inexpensive thing, especially when excavating through solid rock.

All the electrical, water and sewage services have to be run through rock too.

The resort's abandoned cement plant. That's Starship to the right in the next bay over. 

And then there's this channel that was to connect the two bays. Again, it all had to be built through rock.

Pretty cool though, It felt like an amusement park Lazy River ride.

but was never finished.

Coming out.

That Sunday I dinghied into church.

The Reverend was a very dynamic and passionate speaker.

This small choir was REALLY good, with upbeat gospel songs accompanied by drums and organs.

I'm not sure I've ever attended a more powerful and enjoyable service.

This is the view from one of the sanctuary windows.

After church I filled up some water jugs at the dinghy dock. Like the water maker on Starship, this island water is produced through reverse osmosis too.

And on the way back to the boat I swung by this old wreck.

This is us leaving Georgetown and Elizabeth Harbor on our way to Long Island. I'm glad I saw Georgetown but I don't have any real need to go back (other than that beautiful anchorage). However, many cruisers go there year after year for the entire season.

Since this blog is relatively short, let me show you the weather app we use. It's called Windy. It provides access to five different weather models. That way we can just pick the one we like best. It forecasts wind, waves and currents, which is what we're most interested in. Plus, temperatures, precipitation, barometric pressure, humidity, dew point, fog, cloud cover, visibility, CAPE index, NO2, PM2.5, Aerosol, SO2, CO concentration, ozone, dust and fire intensity. It also has weather radar, satellite images and provides weather warnings. 

As far as the weather here goes, it's been almost perfect since we arrived in Bimini on Christmas Eve with highs mostly in the upper 70's/low80's, lows in the lower to mid 70's, low humidity, there's almost always a breeze and the entire time we've been here it's only sprinkled a couple times. Perfect weather for every thing but swimming/snorkeling, though the lack of coral and fish, other than sharks, hasn't motivated us much.

Also, here are a couple screen shots from the new controllers for the 1065 watts of solar panels we installed last fall. Despite our older battery bank, everything is working great, though since we have room on one of the controllers we might get another panel so on cloudy days we get more charging. The best feature of the new system is that I can lay in bed and monitor everything on my phone.

The next blog will be about our time on Long Island, which included jumping into the second deepest  blue hole in the world.