DISCOVERING NEW ANCHORAGES IN THE BAHAMAS 

Written by Doug Weibel, SV Frolic

Are there any new anchorages for a cruiser left to discover in the Bahamas?  Perhaps at Andros with its long, poorly documented coastline, but surely not in the Exumas.  A popular cruising ground for decades, one must assume that some cruiser has anchored in every possible nook or cranny in the Exumas at some point.  Still, there are spots that aren’t much recognized as anchorages.  We had the pleasure to wander our way into one, and I’m going to give up the info on this great spot.

We had a boatload of guests.  Our son, Drew, and his wife, Jenny, and our daughter, Ashley, and her boyfriend, Chad, had all come for a long week.  We were having a great time, excepting trying to transport six people about in our dinghy.  After a few days of beaches, snorkeling, and scuba diving, conch, lobster, and other fun, I had to make an announcement.  We had some adverse weather coming and were going to have to find a place to ride it out for a day or maybe a day and a half.

Frontal-influenced weather is common in the Bahamas in the beginning of the winter, November through January to be sure, but things usually start to settle by March.  This year has been exceptional in that there has been a frontal influence at least every ten days, and more typically every five, extending well into March.  If you haven’t been to the Bahamas, I’ll briefly describe the problem this creates.  The Bahamas is a wonderful cruising ground because the natural geography has hundreds of miles of shallow water lying to the west of the various islands and cays, providing numerous good anchorages for the prevailing easterly winds.  However, there are a limited number of good anchorages for winds from the south, west, and north, and very few that are good for winds from all directions.  When winds shift from the east with any strength, the few good anchorages become very congested.

The forecast we were looking at had winds over 20 knots  with gusts approaching 30 swinging through south, west, and north.  And I had extra motivation for finding a comfortable spot.  Our son and daughter-in-law had just announced that they were expecting, and Jenny was having some nausea.  Sitting in a rolly anchorage for 24 hours would not be good!

My wife, Marjorie, and I first thought of the northern anchorage at Lee Stocking Island.  That anchorage would provide good protection from the west and better from the north but would have five miles of fetch with winds from the south.  I wanted to find somewhere better for Jenny.  I was thinking about a spot marked with an anchor icon on the Explorer charts southwest of Lignumvitae Cay, which looked to have good protection from the west and north and had a broad sand flat to the south that showed nearly dry at low tide.  I suspected this spot would attract few other boats and might be somewhat comfortable.

About this time, a sister ship of ours, Sorella, reached out to us as they saw we were in the neighborhood on the NoForeignLand app.  They had been in the Prime Cay (Young Island) west anchorage, right across from the Lignumvitae anchorage I was considering, and had moved to the south side of Prime Cay.  Looking at the chart, the cove on the south side of the Cay provided excellent protection for the upcoming weather, but the entrance from Exuma Sound was through shallow, coral-filled water.  Sorella indicated they had come in at low tide so there was adequate depth, with little margin, and a lot of zig-zagging around coral heads was required.  It looked like a great spot except for two things.  The first is that other boats started showing up there, perhaps attracted by Sorella’s presence.  It is no fun to make a difficult approach to an anchorage only to find all the good space taken.  The second was that I was concerned about leaving the anchorage if the easterly winds should reestablish and cause significant seas to be hitting the shallow coral-filled water before we were ready to move on.  

While studying the area on the chart, I noticed a sort of very narrow cut between Salt Cay and Little Darby Island.  Entering a narrow slot between a rocky bar and a patch reef, one could fairly quickly turn southeast and be protected from Exuma Sound seas by Salt Cay.  From there, a deep tidal channel runs southeast inside the northern end of Lignumvitae Cay and then sweeps southwest beyond the southern end of Little Darby Island.  The tidal channel shallows a bit but carries two and a half meters (at MLW) to the area just north of Goat Cay.  We dropped the anchor not far off Goat Cay in three meters at mid-tide and settled in.

This proved to be an excellent anchorage.  We had sustained winds of twenty plus from the south, west, and north over twenty-four hours, and a squall in the night with gusts into the upper thirties.  Though there was a light tidal current, we never had a bit of roll during all that time.  The water is clear, and the scenery is terrific.  Goat Cay was formerly owned by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill and has a very tasteful complex with a bell tower that only chimed fifteen minutes before sunset.  More than a half dozen beaches lie within a mile.  There was some good snorkeling off Goat Cay, and we observed a party from Goat Cay anchor in the tidal channel to fish.

We really enjoyed this anchorage!  It is not in ActiveCaptain or Navily.  It is not marked on the chart.  I did eventually find a brief mention of it in Pavlidis’ Exuma Guide, but under the section about the Pimlico Cays, not where you would think to look.  The entrance requires caution as it is narrow.  In conditions that are not too sporty, any captain that has gotten to the Exumas should be able to navigate it with a spotter on the bow.  On our exit, poorly timed to coincide with an outgoing tide but with fairly small waves in Exuma Sound, we did observe that the entrance has the characteristics of many cuts in the Bahamas and should be treated with due respect.  I expect a nasty rage will set up there with large waves from the east and an outgoing tide.  But we found 2.8 meters at low tide between the bar and patch reef coming in, the shallowest spot, so there is no need to time the tide for depth.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately how it is easy to get in the habit of just going to the popular anchorages.  It is easy to get on ActiveCaptain and find spots with lots of popular reviews.  How many great anchorages do we miss by not applying our own skills and knowledge to guide us to a safe spot?  I encourage you to find some “new” spots of your own.  Be prudent and have a backup plan, but risk the time to explore somewhere new!