SV Erica's travels: Bahamas (11th February to 16th March 2015)

On the 11^th of February after 2 days of gales we departed Mayaguana Island in the Southern Bahamas. (A fellow cruisers yacht "SV Wild Blue"on anchor)

We arrived at Castle Island under motor with incredible visibility. We could clearly see the bottom at 18m! We spent a couple of days here where we explored the abandoned lighthouse and keepers houses and beachcombed.

In complete contrast we sailed in 2-3m of baby powder blue water in the protection of the Bight of Acklins. It was an amazing experience to watch the bottom as we glided across the mirror calm water with a gentle breeze just filling the sails

Our next stop was Little harbour at Long Island where we waited as a frontal system moved over. The blow holes in the porous rocky terrain, beachcombing and catching squid amused us

Clarence town was a good place for some provisions at the Government market and a quaint little grocer

On Long Island there were dozens of “Blue Holes” in both the land and shallow lagoons. These soak holes are perfectly round and quite large and are filled with sea water to sea level.

A sail up the coast on the Atlantic side took us to Calabash bay where we checked out a great little lagoon by dinghy. The entrance was shallow and narrow but we estimated that we could get “Erica” inside. We spent a week here where we beached on the white sandy bottom and gave the bottom a clean off and the hull a polish.

We had a quick stop in Georgetown, Great Exuma Island for reprovisioning of food and water. There were still around 300 of the 450 boats here left over from a big regatta. It was not our scene so we continued on up through the many beautiful Exuma Cays.

Short passages and gorgeous anchorages to be had.

Rat Cay will always be remembered as this is where my good canon camera went for a swim never to work again! So the GoPro and Eric’s little Fuji will have to suffice.

Big majors spot, Staniel Cay and James Bond’s movie setting at Thunderball Grotto were a real highlight where we enjoyed the swimming pigs, nurse sharks up close and swimming in the cave.

We spent hours snorkelling in the crystal clean clear water

Then on to Shroud Cay where a kayak from the western to eastern shores took us through mangrove estuaries to the most beautiful private beaches we have seen

On the way back the tide had flooded the waterways and we got lost. The sun was going down and we feared we would have to spend the night in the kayak with the night insects! Luckily using the direction of the sinking sun and some commonsense we got back to “Erica” just on night fall.

On our way north to Great Bahama island we stopped overnight at Nassau but didn’t go ashore. On passage at night to Freeport and Lucayan we were surrounded by cruise ships and tankers. We counted 10 in our visual range at one time . Having AIS is just wonderful to prevent collisions.