17th April 2026 | Odometer: 2007nm | Bahamas
After waiting out the wind for a week in Thompson Bay, it was finally time to head north up the island chain to Great Exuma! Rusty enjoyed first-class passenger treatment while Ryan and I pulled up the anchor and got us underway. With a beautiful calm start coming out of the bay, we were about an hour in when a couple of dolphins came by – Rusty spotted them first. Unfortunately they didn’t stick around long and I only managed to snap one little blurry shot.
Dad did very well for his first passage, but thankfully it was also only really rough in one short section, with the rest of the passage being smooth and protected. Ryan and I were a little nervous dodging all the shallows through the last hour or so. Even on Google Earth the water looks incredible! The blues here are truly outrageous.
George Town was such a shock to the system after the quiet, sparsely populated Thompson Bay on Long Island. George Town is a huge cruising and boating center and there were hundreds of boats everywhere! So many sailing boats and more trawlers than we had ever seen before! A regatta was planned for the following week so it was probably even busier than usual!
Generally the rich folks take a mooring ball near the main attractions and the rest of the cruisers spread out along a long stretch of barrier islands anchoring all the way along. We putted our way up, ogling all the ridiculously fancy trawlers, and found ourselves a nice spot in the crowd in front of a cute beach. We didn’t actually end up in George Town proper, but over next to the barrier island, Stocking Island.
After our settling in time, we walked to the Stocking Island Monument which was right next to our anchorage and admired the views all around. The landscape is a beautiful mix of arid, salty scrub interspersed with gorgeous sandy beaches, accompanied by dramatic white cliffs on the windward side.
Of course the trail is a bit how-ya-goin, so we lost it a little as we made our way back. But all good in the end!
We were lucky enough that another dolphin decided to hangout besides our boat while we were drinking our sun downers that evening.
The Exuma Chain
We had initially thought that we would spend a couple of nights in George Town, but we were fully stocked up and the weather was glorious, and none of us were very excited about how busy and crowded it was… so we bailed the next day and headed north up the infamous Exuma chain.
When planning our route in the Bahamas, we had regularly asked many experienced cruisers their favourite places. Although many said this island or that island, often in the outer chain, the consistent overwhelming answer was – you have to see the Exumas! So up the Exuma chain we went!
The Exuma Chain is a long skinny string of tiny islands which runs roughly NW to SE. When you look at Google Maps it almost looks like there is nothing there!
But as you zoom in further and further you find dozens and dozens of tiny islands with little strips of water between them. The eastern side plunges quickly to immense depths of 1000 to 1500 meters just a hundred meters or so from the islands; whilst the western side is incredibly shallow – often too shallow for navigation. Tiny inlets run between the islands and around the shallows creating amazing little hops to make your way along as you navigate roughly north. The picture below is a snapshot of just 20km (12miles) of the approximately 150km (100miles) of the chain… the whole thing is like this – it’s incredible!
Some areas are too shallow to navigate on the calm, protected western side and we had to traverse back out into the deep water to continue northwards. Planning the timing of the entry and exit turned out to be the trickiest part of the numerous short hops we did in this region. The tidal currents ripping in and out through the cuts between the land were intense and reached easily 3 or 4 knots of current in some cases – no laughing matter when our top speed is 6.5!
So that morning, we joined what felt like a flotilla of boats leaving George Town, and headed up towards Rat Cay, and timed our travel so our first westbound cut entry would be with the incoming tide and would give us a speed assist!
This type of navigation is very different to what we were used to! We were very used to heading out of a shallow (4-5 meter depth) anchorage into very deep water, travelling for hours then turning into another anchorage. Now, we were finding ourselves traversing the “deep” channel – usually only 3 or 4 meters deep, amongst rocks and shallow sand that was sometimes breaking out the surface of the water! You definitely need to pay attention making your way through the skinny channels!
We pulled up in Rat Cay, a truly gorgeous anchorage where we intended to have lunch and spend a few hours in the high tide, before moving onto a new spot for the evening and overnight. It was such a pretty spot we decided to have a quick walk on the beach and an explore up some of the beach tracks.
As we were launching the dinghy, Dad and Ryan were in and I was pushing the bow out when the sand beneath the dinghy exploded outwards in a big rush and I yelped as an enormous stingray burst out of the sand right next to me! Not sure who got more of a fright – me or the sting ray! We must have pushed the dinghy right over where he was sleeping. In the shallow water we were able to get a pretty cool close up of him as we headed out.
Rat Cay to William’s Bay
The tide was starting to turn, and the swell was starting to build when we reached Perspective once more so we pulled up the anchor and headed north another half hour to get to William’s Bay for a more protected overnight spot.
William’s Bay is a gloriously calm and protected anchorage, surrounded by wide fields of sea grass filled with living conch. The conch are so cute to see, each carrying around a shell that slowly grows with them; and seems to be it’s own tiny little ecosystem living on top of it. If you were ever into Terry Pratchett’s Discworld this is my new mental imagery of it haha.
Conch are also an interesting and odd creature. They have two eyes which they look out with that are on long periscope limbs – I tried so hard to get a shot of one moving itself with their singular (!) long leg that they drag themselves along with. Unfortunately, they watch you swimming over them and will not come out their shells until you are far way. You can tell they are watching as you see their little eyes tracking you around.
Although the snorkelling wasn’t very exciting through the fields of sea grass, the water temperature and sunshine was so good we ended up swimming around the boat for ages. The clouds and wind overhead created the most interesting dappled light effects against the oddly mottled surface of the sea floor. The water was extremely shallow and we were just a tad nervous about how close the bow was to the bottom!
Successfully Seeing Sharks!
Later that evening we headed to shore to “hike” the short trail over to the windward side to check out the views. The white limestone cliffs drop in steep descent to the tumultous waves on the far side of the island, it’s always shocking to me that this tiny little strip of land can stop such an enormous ocean swell.
Getting the dinghy to shore was a bit of a mission as it got so shallow so far out we had to put the wheels down and push it in for about forty meters or so over the bumpy sea floor. Thank goodness for those dinghy wheels!
We went for a bit of a drive around the shallow edges of the bay when we noticed an odd shape in the water nearby, zooming after it, we spotted it – our first shark! Woohoo! A black tipped reef shark was cruising along near us and we had great fun following it through the shallows.
After the initial excitement passed we continued on our way around the bay and eventually decided to head back to the boat. Right as we were arriving on the back deck, I spotted another shark coming right under the back of Perspective and passed us! We quickly switched round and followed and were able to spot a large nurse shark cruising along! Awesome, in just an hour we had gone from having seen no sharks to seeing two different ones! This nurse shark also had a fairly large remora (sucker fish) along with it and you can just make it out in this first picture.
We considered ourselves totally spoiled that night as we were admiring the sunset and a third shark passed on by right under the boat. They really move very uniquely through the water compared to other sea creatures we have seen and there is no doubt in your mind when you spot one!
We also tried really hard not to think about the fact that we had spotted all three of these sharks right where we had our amazing swim earlier that day… 😳😅
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