We left Staniel Cay with the intention to get to Georgetown pretty quickly, but in short hops. We pulled into a different anchorage each night, and left early in the mornings.
First we stopped at Little Farmers Cay. Our timing was off for the tides, so it was a really sporty ride getting through the cut, but we made it without incident. This is the first place we’ve been where our Navionics charts have been WAY off. They showed 1-3 feet of water in a large area where we found nothing less than eight feet. Fortunately, by now we felt pretty confident in our ability to read the water, so we proceeded with caution, and were fine. Our ancient Explorer Charts showed more depth, and were ultimately more accurate, and that also gave us confidence. We had a nice evening there visiting with the crew of s/v Monarch, who pulled in right after us from the other side. We took off as soon as we had decent light in the morning. Leaving, we also sailed right over water marked on the chart as 3.5 – 4 feet, but had plenty of depth: 8 feet or more again. We re-entered the Atlantic side of the water through Galliot Cay Cut, and were stunned at the beauty of that area. We hated to pass it by, and I’m sure we’ll return someday.
The next night was spent at Children’s Bay Cay, which we entered through Rat Cay Cut. The water is
pretty shallow through here, but we made it fine,and so did Monarch whose draft is a bit deeper than ours. It took two tries to find enough sand to anchor, but our Mantus anchor dug in perfectly once we did.
We decided to try a little spearfishing, and it was a productive session. We feasted on conch, fish, and lobster with Zach and Jessica. Jessica made me a sweet, handwritten recipe for lobster cakes, so we made that, grilled the fish, and made a conch salad. Yum! We were stuffed, to say the least.
In the morning, we took off to make Georgetown by daylight, which we did with no issues. To our surprise, in the morning we realized we were anchored right next to Bob on s/v Wyndygo, a Texan we met in Marathon, Florida. We also enjoyed the company of the Magnificent Dolls crew again. I know I say it a lot, but small world!
Georgetown was a good stop with excellent provisioning at Exumas Market and delicious hamburgers (and free Wi-Fi) at Red Boones. Chat-n-Chill at Volleyball beach was also a treat, with Dark and Stormies that would (and did) knock a sailor on their ass. The ribs there are excellent also.
We were ready, though, to get to less populated waters. Conception Island was calling us! As soon as we thought the weather looked good, off we went.
