Interrupting my Bahamas travelogue with a status report: Got a good weather forecast to leave where we are now (Sat., 2/22/2014): GeorgeTown, Great Exuma, Bahamas. Today's the 1st sailboat race in the 34th annual GeorgeTown regatta, and there's plenty of action as the windward mark is about 300' away from The Fox. Big fun. We…
Governor's Harbour is a historic town about 5-1/4 miles SE of Alabaster Bay. It was once the Bahamain seat of government and may very well have been one of Eleuthera Island's pirate hangouts back in the 18th Century. The town has brightly-colored houses lining the hillsides, giving lots of visual texture to the area. The…
Alabaster Bay is a broad bight about 10-1/4 miles SE of Hatchet Bay. It is open to winds from any westerly direction but the depths are good. Holding varies; the first visit there in January 2012 we picked up a large rock on our first anchoring attempt but we held in hard-packed sand on our…
I have decided to describe where The Fox has been, by tracing a roughly NW to SE path that starts at the northern half of Eleuthera Island in the Far Bahamas, and will end at the islands and cays in the SE Bahamas just above the Turks and Caicos islands. First stop: one of our…
The Bahamas have many anchorages that are not good for all-around weather protection. Many are downright roadstead-y. Generally, our 6'2" keel resulted in The Fox anchoring a bit further offshore (thus less weather-protected) than other, shoal-draft boats. However, we could anchor in most if not all of the top cruiser destinations. We just had to…
Protips for folks planning a cruise to the Bahamas for the first time: 1. Most of the Bahamas are shallow. This makes for a very pretty view from space, as well as at sea level – the white and pink sand beaches taper into clear water that varies from jade green to turquoise to sapphire.…
It is now February 2014 and The Fox has been cruising the Bahamas since our arrival on January 15, 2014. This is actually our second cruise through the Bahamas; we were here for the first time from November 2011 through the first week of February, 2012. I had avoided blogging about our first trip to…
It is not necessarily a bad thing to wait a week or two (or four) for a weather window to sail. The worst part is the mental factor: the impatience we feel when we are ready to move, and have prepared The Fox to move, yet it's prudent to stay put. Analyzing and discussing the…
Circumstances on the US East Coast during the past few months seemed to slow GB and me down every time we were keen to get moving. The very bad late-fall/early-winter weather on this side of the continent kept us from putting significant miles under our keel. Repeatedly. After our Fort Pierce New Year's Fiasco, we…
A few miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville, Florida, located along the banks of the Ft. George River, is the old Kingsley Plantation. It grew cotton and indigo during the late 18th through the 19th Centuries, and had a slave population that resided in 32 tabby cabins located about 1/8 mile from the plantation's main house…