Overnight to Highborne Cay, Exumas

We continued traveling through the night, passing through Northwest Channel around 11:30pm and were south of New Providence Island, the home of Nassau, at daybreak.

We arrived as the second boat at the large Highborne Cay anchorage at 12:30pm, dropping anchor in 10 feet of crystal clear water, just west of a high cell phone tower.  We tried our new ipad with its new BTC chip, expecting to have full connectivity however it was not to happen.  The only thing we could get was a No Service message.  We spent the next few hours playing with the ipad, but with no success.  Later in the afternoon we accidentally caught some radio traffic on Channel 16 about the cell tower being inoperative.  No wonder we couldn’t get anything to work.

Bob radioed to the marina to request permission to go ashore at the nearby beach as this is a privately owned island.  We found white sand beaches, few shells, but lots of very jagged lava north and south of a few sandy beaches. 

 A short trail led into the vegetation and over the lava flows and where we found several collapsed lava tubes, one with water below and rocks built up around the edge of the hole in the top, seemingly used as a cistern at one time.  Soon tiring of that activity we took the dinghy around to a bay to the north which had a small resort area with cabanas, beach lounges, a pile of plastic kayaks, grill, etc.  On the way out Bob went snorkeling where we found an area of small conchs and one large conch-like shell (round with no horns).  We left them all there to grow larger though I really wanted the large shell.

Bob is part water dog.

All afternoon our quiet anchorage was filling up with boats and by evening we had 10-12 neighbors, among them two sailboats that Bob had met at Browns Marina, the monohull Dreamcatcher and the catamaran Too Much Fun.  On the return from the bay, we stopped at the two sailboats who confirmed our last weather report of increased winds from the north and a front from the west coming in next week.  Sure enough, the wind picked up making for a bumpy night.

Sunrise on the Bahama Banks