Stuck on Stocking Island

The island to the east of George Town, Exumas is called Stocking Island. There are many beaches on this lovely island and lots of places to anchor nearby. For most of our time in the George Town area, we anchored Sava near, and got stuck on Stocking Island.

Stocking Island Exumas
Stocking Island Exumas

Since this is a big area for cruisers, we tried to participate as much as possible to meet other sailors and learn from them. We went to the places they go, tuned in to the net and went to events for cruisers.

The Daily Cruisers’ net

Every morning at 8am, we tune in to the George Town cruisers’ net on VHF 72. This 30 minute conversation is led by one volunteer sailor and all the other boaters participate.

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Boating Around The Berry Islands

We’ve been in The Bahamas over a week and most of it has been spent enjoying the beautiful weather and clear waters boating the Berry Islands.

Great Harbor Cay

Though adjacent to a cruise line-owned island and home to an airport, Great Harbor Cay feels remote. A great introduction to the Berry Islands for us, we spent 3 nights anchored here. The island is occupied by only 350 or so people, and all of those we interacted with were warm and open; two different people gave us rides. We spent an afternoon traversing the island and the town of Bullocks Harbor by foot, visiting a couple of restaurants, a stunning beach, the marina, and the grocery store.

Colorful town of Great Harbor Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas
Colorful town of Great Harbor Cay
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Sailing The Florida Keys

The Florida Keys are much bigger than I could explore in a year let alone the mere 2 weeks we’ll have spent there. I wish we had more time to spend sailing The Florida Keys but this is the time we had and we did a lot in that time.

Our goal was Key West but it is far! We had to break it up and make stops along the way. With a sailboat, you can’t pick and choose where the stops are. A lot of The Keys don’t have great places to anchor. You want your anchorage to be protected from wind and waves as much as possible. We are learning that those are not always easy to find.

Key Largo

This was our first and longest stay. We motored the boat down from Miami in about 7 hours. We drove because there wasn’t much wind that day and we wanted to arrive before dark. Sadly, sailing the Florida Keys isn’t possible without wind.

Map Miami to Florida Keys
Miami to Key Largo Map, for Zoi!
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