Georgetown! March 21 - 30, 2022
Georgetown is more or less the most popular destination for cruisers in the Exumas and arguably the most popular destination in all the Bahamas. So much so that our weather guy pretty much always was giving us advice based on when we'd be able to get to Georgetown even when we were a long, long way away. Note that I say the most popular, I'm not yet sure I would call it the best destination. There are a lot of things going for it. The Elizabeth Harbor area has a number of things going for it, chief amongst them that it is genuinely massive. At one point this season there were nearly 400 boats anchored in there. Additionally, it is what passes for a big city in the Exumas. There are 3 grocery stores where most islands have either zero or one. There are hardware stores, boat supply stores, pretty much every kind of shopping that you can find in the Bahamas. The down side is that it can feel like you are in an college dorm with loud neighbors very close on every side. Plus your neighbor's apartment might come lose in the middle of the night and smash into yours.
The little lake is the main shopping district -- you ride in on your dinghy.
When we arrived, the anchorage was pretty crowded indeed, but we found a spot that felt pretty safe. The only downside was that when the wind blew the wrong way, we might swing a bit into the main shipping channel, which is obviously not great, but there were at least 7 or 8 boats farther out that we were, so we figured it was ok. One of them was more or less directly behind us a good 80 feet further into the channel. After hanging on the boat long enough to feel confident that we were holding firm and the boat wouldn't coast into anyone else, we took the dinghy ashore to one of the most popular hang-outs in all Georgetown, the famous Chat-N-Chill. It is hard to describe accurately. It is sort of a beach bar & grill with the grill in this case a literal grill. It is surrounded by beaches, volleyball nets, picnic tables, play areas for the kids and pretty much is thronged with the boating set whenever it is open. We had a rum punch or two, some BBQ ribs and pleasant conversation with fellow cruisers. It was an excellent night and the company was quite welcome at this point.
The next morning, everything that seemed so good turned out not so good in a big hurry. As we sipped our coffee, the radio exploded with angry admonitions for people to get out of the channel. This was accompanied by very loud honking from the supply boat making its way up the channel. That boat that was 50 feet behind us was the primary offender and the big boat just barely squeaked past him. People were buzzing him in their dinghy to tell him just how dumb they thought he was and he did motor forward a little bit, but didn't take up anchor and soon drifted back. That wasn't even the bad part of the morning. The bad part was that as I watched this drama unfold behind Dragonfly, I noticed something that made me feel literally sick. Our little dinghy, the car that lets us move between ship and shore, was no longer floating behind us tied happily to the back of Dragonfly. I looked over at Lisa and she noted my facial expression and said, "Oh no, what is it?" I had to tell her that our dinghy had gone on a journey of its own overnight.
Georgetown is a big city for the Bahamas, but not big enough to have dinghies for sale. If our dinghy was permanently lost or damaged, it was going to be huge drama. We'd have to wait until one could be shipped from the states. Also, my sister was coming with my brother-in-law and two of their children for a vacation in just a couple of weeks and that was not going to be a fun trip if we couldn't get them from shore to the boat. We were so upset, we hardly said a word as we waited for the morning radio net. In Georgetown, like other major cruising destinations, there is usually a radio roundup in the morning when new boats introduce themselves, boats declare their intent to depart and people who are need of some help, ask their fellow boaters for a hand. There is also a lot of barter and buy/sell activity of sort of dubious legality. The net opened with a lot of complaints about the people who anchored in the channel. I studied the map and at that moment we were maybe a few feet in the channel, but there were 8 or 9 boats further back than us so I was going to ignore it, until someone read a list of boats and of course, we were included. That just made it even better. When they got to the part of the radio net where they invited anyone who needed help to state what was up, I sadly explained our predicament. I didn't accuse the locals of theft, which some people do and that just ends up more embarrassing for them, I owned up to my mistake and asked everyone to keep an eye out for me. Nobody had an immediate report of finding it, but the sun had only been up a couple of hours and it was a nasty looking day with pretty stuff brezze kicking up the swell in the harbor and a sky that looked like rain.
After the net, I stayed on for the informal talk and said that I had also posted on Facebook and asked if they had any other ideas. They agreed that I had done the right steps and someone even said that they saw a dinghy much like my description tied to a pier nearby. He speculated that maybe someone saw it floating free and tied it up for me. A minute or two later, someone offered to come pick me up and take me to investigate. He turned out to be a super-nice guy named Michel who lives on a houseboat in the harbor. When we went to the dock it was clear that it was not our dinghy, but Michel suggested that we make a search of the other side of the harbor, since we knew which way the winds were blowing last night. Of course, it started to pour rain but we valiantly searched up and down the far shore with no luck. Just as we nearing a decision to give up, we saw a speedboat racing towards us waving from the front. We looked at each other and thought this could be a good sign. Sure enough, as the boat pulled up, they shouted out "Are you looking for a zodiac?" Turns out it washed up on their property and they hauled it around to their dock. They led us back and as we approached, I could tell it was indeed my poor lost dinghy. It had been swamped and was full of water, but the tubes weren't damaged, just a few scuffs on the protective chaps. Some pieces of gear were scattered on the shore and they helped me collect it all. Michel and I used hand pumps to slowly drain the dinghy of collected water. Michel said to me, if there is any justice in the world, it will just start right up. I pulled several times and it didn't want to start at all. Just as I was starting to feel worried I had an engine problem, I realized that I hadn't put the "key" back in the outboard and pointed to it with a laugh. Michel said, "Yeah, we've all done that!" I put the key in, the engine roared to life on the next pull and I made my way back across the harbor to triumphantly show Lisa. It was a great relief to us both, I'm sure.
Even the winds were on our side as they changed direction and we were far outside the channel now. We made a trip into town to scout out the shopping situation, because we were going to need to load up on supplies to feed four guests and booze enough for the four "grown ups." My brother-in-law had a very specific set of rum requirements and I wanted to humor him because if I did I was pretty sure I could make him bartend all week. The dinghy ride was very wet because no matter what I did, I couldn't avoid the choppy waves and we both just had to do our shopping with wet butts. I don't think I was doing it wrong, because I noticed pretty much everyone else had the same issue. We did run into some of our new friends from Chat 'N Chill in town at the bar/restaurant and we may have indulged in a "thank god we got our dinghy back" beer.
The key shopping destination. Although many islands don't sell groceries, most every island has a booze store. Not with the selection this place had, though.
Eventually, we decided that anchoring with 200 our of fellow boaters just wasn't really the Bahamas scene we were looking for. We heard of an anchorage called Red Shanks that was a lot more isolated and usually only contained maybe 15 boats at most. Better yet, some folks we met earlier were anchored over there, so we figured it had to be a good spot. We wandered over there and it did turn out to be exactly as advertised. It offered excellent protection from wind in any direction and was a million times more quiet. We got lots of errands done, including bringing all of our clothes ashore to wash everything at once. We can do a load at a time on the boat, but the machine is small and it only holds about a half-sized load. Once you get behind, it feels impossible to catch up. The laundry offered a welcome escape where we could get it all done in a couple hours. We also made some new friends who announced they were looking for some water containers on the morning radio net. We told them we had a couple that we had just replaced with new ones and we'd be happy to give them away. Apparently most people try to barter for that sort of thing, but we weren't interested in that. They decided that the thing to do was to trade us a bottle of wine in that case and we happily accepted. Apparently these containers were in some demand because another guy came by later in the day to see if we had any more.
A drone shot of the Red Shanks anchorage from another cruiser. This was much more like it!
We also rented a car for the day one day so that we could hit up all the grocery stores in preparation for the nephews and maybe check out a fancy restaurant we had heard about. The rental car company operated on island time and after telling us they would meet us at a particular time, we ended up finally hooking up about 2 hours later. We thought we outsmarted them by planning to meet at a bar/restaurant we knew, but it turned out to be closed. Even though it was closed, the owner came out and sat on the deck with us and offered to cook us something anyhow. Had we known just how late the car would be, we'd have taken him up on it. He also arranged to cook breakfast for some young ladies he had met at a bar the night before. They showed up for breakfast at about 12:30 and there was a lot of good-natured abuse being thrown in both directions about the night before, the sorry condition they were all in and the negative effect this kind of scandalous behavior might have on the nice American couple he was trying to be nice to. We assured them it would take a lot more effort to scandalize us than that. We did end up going to Blu, the restaurant we had heard good things about and it turned out to be excellent. The food was not the best ever, but the views couldn't be beat!
Did you think I was done screwing up? Ha! A while after we got back to the boat, someone came up on a little aluminum boat with an outboard going from boat to boat in the anchorage. I figured maybe he was selling something, so I came out to greet him. He said "Were you just on the dock back there?" I agreed that I was and he waved the key to the rental car at me. He said I left it in the door and he figured I must be on one of these boats. That was super nice, although the rental car company told me to just park it on the side of the road with the key in the ignition once I was done, so I don't think they thought there was any crime risk. I thanked him and persuaded him to take a few bucks for gas money. I realized that the one thing that was missing from Georgetown was giving myself some sort of injury. So when I made the bed with the nice clean sheets from the laundry, I somehow scraped my finger on one of the wooden slats, which I noticed when I was bleeding on various surfaces in our cabin. I tried to convince Lisa this was evidence that bed making was too strenuous of an activity for me, but she wasn't buying it. Its actually a serious pain in the ass to move around that big memory foam mattress and get the sheets around it, but I guess I am better qualified by virtue of my ape-like arms.
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