Our sincerest thanks to Greg and Barbara Allard for sharing their thoughts and beautiful photography from their Bahamas cruises. These photos and descriptions will have you aching to follow in the Allard’s wake! Stay tuned for more letters in the weeks ahead.

Letter # 4
Sometimes, in these letters, we may give the impression that cruising in the Bahamas is all about spectacular clear turquoise water, friendly and interesting local people, historic places, great food, and gentle winds. Yes, we often have those things. But not always.

The type of cruising we do is not for everyone. Right now we are hundreds of miles off the coast of the U.S., in a foreign country. Some people enjoy their boats by “coastal cruising”, where they stay close to home port, and go out for day trips. Over the years, we have often enjoyed boating that way. Non-boaters have a vision of what we do as similar to an experience on a 1000’ long cruise ship, where they are served lobster and steak and the finest wines. Of course, the beauty of a cruise ship experience is that, to use a Bahamian word, there is no “boderation” (“botheration”) – that is, the running and maintenance of the ship, the meals and entertainment and all of the other support work is done for you by other people.

Not on “Meander”. We are self sufficient, and we have to do it all: Barbara and I must function as navigators and pilots, ship’s engineers and mechanics, weather analysts, route planners, and still have time to do cooking, laundry, and repair any one of the dozens of onboard systems. (We carry many spare parts.)

Our boat is not simple. We have two Detroit Diesel propulsion engines, each rated at 735 HP. They need fuel, and we track their usage carefully, since fueling locations in the remote Bahamas are limited, and the few suppliers that exist often run out – if for instance the fuel barge cannot make it to their location because of bad weather.

On board, we can make two of the three critical things we need: water and electricity. We can’t make fuel. For electricity, we have two generators (which like the engines need to be maintained), and we have a watermaker, which takes salt water and using a high pressure pump pushes it through a membrane to remove the salt. (It makes the best drinking water you’ve ever tasted.) Good water is critical for us; many Bahamians do not even drink their own municipal water, and rely instead on bottled water.

Provisioning (stocking the boat with food) is critical, since in the remote parts of the Bahamas there are few stores, and selection is often limited. We have three freezers aboard, and bring an assortment of frozen foods from the U.S.

The most difficult challenge we face is the weather. When we have internet access (which is better every year in the Bahamas) we can use a number of excellent marine weather sites which help us make good decisions about whether to go or not to go, and where to go. If we don’t have internet access, we rely upon our Sirius XM Marine Weather receiver which obtains extensive weather reports for us by satellite; this means we can access that information far from land. “Meander” also has two radars aboard, which can help us see approaching storms up to 48 miles away.

As we near hurricane season, we have to give extra attention to any reports of tropical storm activity, and make preparations if needed.


This is one of the weather reports we received a several days ago. The yellow “X” marking a troubling weather system is exactly where we are. As you can see from the legend at the bottom, there is less than a 40% chance of a cyclone (hurricane) formation. Great. Not quite the odds we wanted. Since this report was issued, the projections are that it will not develop further, which is good news. Nevertheless, this is still a huge disturbance which has been with us for about ten days: high winds, lightening and thunder, and torrential rains, all of which are part of this system. It shows no signs of letting up.

We were in George Town (for the Regatta) when this system first approached. George Town was not a good place to ride out this mess, so we had to go either north or south. After analyzing the projections, and meeting with Jim and Ellen on the boat traveling with us, we decided to go south to Long Island, to a place called Thompson’s Bay, which would provide protection for us from the projected week-long 30+ knot NE winds.

We left while the weather was still good. Here, Barbara pilots us south, through the shallow waters of the banks west of Long Island.

The trip to Long Island was uneventful; winds were still calm, and our course brought us through some spectacular waters.

We anchored in Thompson’s; the holding was good – which means the anchor dug in and held us quite well. (That doesn’t always happen – often the bottom is rock or thick weeds, and the anchor has a hard time holding in those kinds of bottoms.)

After a couple of days there, the weather information projected that conditions would deteriorate even further, so we pulled up our anchors and travelled about two hours along the west coast of Long Island to a little marina at Stella Maris. The plan was to seek shelter in their enclosed basin.

This is an aerial view of the marina from their website, taken on a nice day.

One problem with the Stella Maris marina: there are over three miles of extremely shallow water leading into the marina. At low tide there is not sufficient water to float our boats, which draw about 4’10”, and at low tide there is only 4’ of water. So we had to time our entry into the marina at full high tide.

It’s a small run-down facility, with only a few slips for larger boats. We guess it was built in the 70’s, and has not been well maintained, probably because access to the marina over the three miles of really shallow water discourages most boats from attempting the passage. At one time it’s likely that a channel was dredged for the three miles, but the first hurricane would have filled that in, and it is just too expensive to do after every storm.

We timed the approach correctly, and we had about 1’7” of water under our keel, just enough to squeak into the basin. As I write this, “Meander” is docked in the lower part of the basin, in the “L” just behind the tree. “Latitude” is just behind us.

The move to this marina turned out to be a prudent one: we’ve been here over a week now, and we’ve had continued high winds, with repeated thunderstorms and driving rain. The owners and staff at this marina have been superb, and we recommend it to any cruiser.

A view from our boat, docked inside the marina. Once in a while the sun poked through the clouds, but only for a minute or two. Each wave of thunderstorms brought heavy gusts of wind.

It has rained so much that Jim (on “Latitude”) said:
“Think we need a cruise meeting this AM, or why bother… all we need to do is start getting two of each of the local animals on board?”

The advantages of weathering stormy weather while tied to a dock are significant; it provides an opportunity to go ashore and explore the island you came to visit. It also gives you the confidence of knowing that your boat will be there when you return. We’ve have friends who left their boat anchored off shore, and when they returned the anchor line had been cut through from sharp coral on the bottom of the harbor, and their 40’ boat wound up on a rocky shore.

Our marina is part of a large resort which is on the east side of the island, and since we are guests at the marina, we have full use of the resort’s beautiful property. There, we saw first hand parts of the large storm we were evading. The waves offshore were 6-8’ in height.

We then came upon something strange, as shown in this photo. The resort had created a salt water swimming pool carved out of the rock along the shore. Off to the left is a set of stairs leading down into the pool. The fresh ocean water comes in from the right side, and flows out the far end. They put tons of sand into the pool, to make it comfortable to walk on. The pool never has to be cleaned, vacuumed or treated with chemicals. The natural flow of the ocean provides a constant source of clean water.

Here is the channel which was dug out of the rock to supply water to the pool. This was a clever approach to providing a good, protected place to swim on a rocky coast.

No place to be in a boat.

We rented a car, and at the end of a horrendously potholed half-mile mud-dirt road, we came upon a small house. This woman, Sarah Adderley, is a basket maker, upholding a fine but declining tradition.

Sarah Adderley

The Bahamas are home to huge land crabs. They normally hide in the woods and come out at night, but this one decided to cross the road in front of our car. If he stretched his claws out, he would be at least a foot and a half wide. Some Bahamians eat them, but they need to be purged for several days or else they taste foul.

Over the years we have collected a number of quality Bahamian baskets, but until we met this man, we had never known a male basket maker. This basket was $18, and was an unusually good design.

Charles Wallace of Dunmore, Long Island, The Bahamas. Proud basketmaker.

The rains continued. We passed this church and saw a group of smart Bahamian goats, who had taken shelter under the portico. We didn’t think the pastor would be too happy when he saw the mess they made.

We drove a mile down another muddy, soaked, potholed road, in search of – believe it or not – a French restaurant we’d heard about. There are only a dozen or so “restaurants” on this island of 3,500 people and many of those are take-out places – serving the Bahamian version of fast food. So when we heard of a fine French restaurant, we just had to find it.

It took this French-Canadian, Pierre, fifteen years to build his restaurant which is in the middle of nowhere. He performs the exceptional cooking, waits on the tables, and washes the dishes. All alone.

Dining on the porch at Chez Pierre restaurant, with Jim and Ellen. We had quite simply one of the best meals in a very long time. Even if it was raining!

“I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea – whether it is to sail or to watch it – we are going back from whence we came.” John F. Kennedy

As of this writing, we are still docked at the small marina on Long Island, as the thunderstorms still roll in and the winds howl. It looks as if we may not have an opening in the weather for at least several more days. There are many worse places to be. In our next Letter we will cover more of this interesting and diverse island.

Warmest regards
Greg and Barbara
Copyright, Greg Allard

Our sincerest thanks to Greg and Barbara Allard for sharing their thoughts and beautiful photography from their Bahamas cruises. These photos and descriptions will have you aching to follow in the Allard’s wake! Stay tuned for more letters in the weeks ahead.

Letter # 3

Our next stop on this year’s Bahamas cruise was George Town, on Great Exuma Island in the most southerly part of the Exumas.
George Town is a milestone destination for many cruisers. In the winter and early spring up to 500 boats spend several months in the huge harbor. There is decent provisioning (places to buy food and boat parts), good anchorages, and shoreside facilities better than anywhere else in this remote area.

The Bahamas are a series of 750 islands and cays, spread out in an archipelago 590 miles long and 185 miles wide. For centuries the Bahamians depended solely upon wooden sailing boats for travel between islands, and for earning a living through activities such as fishing, sponge harvesting, and trade.

George Town is the site of the annual Family Islands Regatta, the Bahamian world-series of sailboat racing. In the 1950’s a group of people recognized that the “age of working sail” was drawing to an end, and they looked for a way to preserve the boat building and sailing skills of the Bahamian people. Their plans resulted in the first Family Islands Regatta, first run in 1954. Steven Pavlidis in The Exuma Guide describes the guidelines:

“The rules that govern Bahamian sloop racing are quite clear: competing boats must be designed, built, owned and skippered by Bahamians. The overall length (LOA) may not be more than 28’3”, the sails must be of canvas, the hull must be of wood, and the single wooden mast may not bend. The rules do not permit vertical transoms, bowsprits, spreaders, winches, or any sort of wind or speed instruments including tell-tales.”

If you are a sailor, you will appreciate that these rules are quite strict, and eliminate many features found on modern sailing vessels.

“The sloops race three times around a triangular course…As the boats take the wind and heel they must shift their ballast….Each boat has prys, wooden planks which extend about 4’ or so on the windward side of the boat. The crew then climbs out onto the prys to balance the boat…..” It does happen that sometimes a crew member falls off the pry, and “any boat that does not stop for a MOB (man over board) is disqualified.” (Pavlides)

The last time we were in George Town for the Regatta was in 2011, and we had enjoyed it so much we wanted to see it again this year.

This is the boat we always root for: Tida Wave, which hails from Staniel Cay. (Boats come from all over the Bahamas to participate.)

The first thing to notice is the size of the “sail plan”. The sails are huge compared to the size of the boat. That feature makes the boats sail really fast, but it also makes them difficult to control. More on that later.

The original captain of Tida Wave was Rolly Gray, a legend of sailing in the Bahamas. He won (at least according to most people on Staniel Cay) all of his races. He died in 2007, and is buried on Staniel Cay.

Rolly Gray is so revered in the Bahamas they named one of their largest Royal Bahamas Defense Force cruisers after him. One of the most famous Bahamian pieces of music is “Sailor Man Song” by Basil Smith, which is about Rolly Gray.

A close up of Tida Wave under sail, with the ballast (men) out on the pry bars to help keep the boat level. If the boat tacks (turns into the wind to sail in a different direction), the men scamper down the pry boards into the boat, drag the boards to the other side, and climb out on them….all in a matter of ten seconds or so!

The concentration of the crew is intense.

Yes, there are collisions, and here – a near collision.

Three in a row, on the same point of sail.

Some of the crew on Tida Wave give course directions to the helmsman.

Sometimes the boats encounter significant wind gusts. In this dramatic moment the crew of Tida Wave struggles to move as much of their weight to the end the pry boards as possible, to keep the boat from tipping over on her side. Simultaneously one of the crew at the stern lets out the main sail to help keep the boat from foundering. The sail is out so far that it is dragging in the water.

Later in the day the rains arrived, but the race continued. This is a view from our boat, of ghost ships sailing in the rainstorm.

Unfortunately, Tida Wave did not take first place this year, but a boat from our next stop south, Long Island, did.

Not all of the fun is out in the harbour. The event triggers shoreside parties, food, and yes, some drinking. Kalik (rhymes with “click”) is the national beer.

Food stalls offer the best of traditional Bahamian cooking: cracked conch (conch which has been pounded and tenderized with a mallet and then deep fried); conch salad, macaroni and cheese, and peas and rice. With music loud enough to lift you off the ground.

There’s an old nautical saying: “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” This was a night sky, but….

When doing this type of cruising, hundreds of miles from the U.S. coast, it’s “all about the weather.” We are at the mercy of what mother nature throws at us, and sometimes it is not pretty. We have been watching a bad weather system which is approaching the Bahamas, with winds forecast for 30+ knots. That series of fronts is north of us, so we and our friends on Latitude have decided to run south four hours to Long Island, where there is a good anchorage at Thompson’s Bay, protected from the NE winds, and a small marina nearby if necessary. That choice is not without risk, since we may wind up being pinned down there for a while.

More to follow in the next Letter.

Warm regards,
Greg and Barbara

Copyright, Greg Allard