Sailing Agora

Tag: caribbean

  • Spanish Cay: The One Where We Almost Left (summer 2025 recap)

    We were ready to go home.

    Not in a defeated way – more in the way that five weeks of Bahamian cruising will make you crave a working generator, a good rinse of the boat, and maybe a grocery store that isn’t a 45-minute trip on the dinghy away. We had a reserved slip in Georgia. We were looking at a weather window. We were on our way out. And then we had a generator that was overheating. Suddenly we were reminded that “plans” in this life can quickly become “suggestions.”

    The repair saga had been grinding on for a week. Barrett had tried replacing fuses. They all blew. So we were stuck. Not dramatically stuck – we were in the Bahamas, after all – but stuck with a ticking clock, because getting back to the States for a real repair meant not dawdling. 

    Spanish Cay made the being-stuck part easier than we expected. It’s a private island with a marina, which sounds like the setup to an exclusive and slightly intimidating experience, and instead it was just great. Quietly busy in a way that felt special. The kind of place where you look around and think: we would never have come here on purpose, and we’re really glad we ended up here. 

    The fish cleaning station alone was worth it – sharks circling for scraps every day at the same time, the kids absolutely riveted, a crowd of fellow boaters gathered around like it was the best show on the island. It was. Lobster season had just opened, and the energy around that felt celebratory in a way that’s hard to explain if you haven’t spent weeks anticipating it, unsure whether you’d be there for it.

    We met cruisers there who were also trying to time their departure, also watching the weather, also doing the mental math of how long they could stay before the window closed. There’s a specific kind of camaraderie in that. Everyone a little tired, a little ready, all of us standing on a beautiful private island being very reasonable about leaving it.

    We’d found a local guy on the island who works on the generator that powers the whole place – which felt promising, like if anyone could fix it, it was him. And he did fix it, technically. It started. It ran. It just didn’t charge the batteries, which is, as it turns out, the main thing we need our generator to do.

    We finally needed to just leave. The generator situation meant we were moving with a little more urgency than we would have liked, and the return trip to the States had its own energy: purposeful, a little bittersweet, the Bahamas shrinking in the rearview.

    But Spanish Cay was a good last chapter. Unexpected and unhurried and full of sharks at the fish station, which honestly is a pretty solid way to end a summer.

    Agora on the hook at Spanish Cay
    a frozen rum drink and the pool where we met friends, waiting for generator repair
    what a view!
    starfish and clear water
    generator wasn’t the only thing that needed repair – a fresh water pump died on us too…
    …and the bathroom shower wouldn’t drain
    but mostly the issue was the generator
    Barrett swam in sharky waters to see whether it was an issue below the waterline…
    …it wasn’t, but we needed shore power to stay charged, so we took a slip.
    Barrett spent days trying to fix the problem.
    the boys wandered
    the kids explored
    they fed sharks
    Barrett tinkered
    more sharks!
    our unexpected home for a bit
    amazing creatures
    final night at Spanish Cay Marina
    our final night in the Bahamas – we left from Grand Cay

  • Green Turtle Cay: The One That Made It All Feel Real (summer 2025 recap)

    There’s a version of this cruising life that exists in your head before you do it. The turquoise water, the unhurried days, the feeling of being exactly where you’re supposed to be. Green Turtle Cay was the first place where the version in my head and the version I was actually living balanced out.

    We’d met a family from Florida at the dock in Coco Bay, where stingrays and turtles eat out of tourists’ hands – a mix of anchorage and beach hang that defines Bahamian cruising. It was the kind of meeting that starts as a wave, an introduction, a “Cheers!” and then turns into something real before you quite notice it happening. They were generous in the way that many boat families tend to be. They were there on their center console power boat, I’s on the Prize, for vacation, not as full-time cruisers. They loaned us a spear pole before we’d really earned the right to ask for one, showed up with good energy, and had kids who matched ours in age and temperament in the ways that matter most when you’re all stuck on boats together. Different in plenty of ways, but similarly the same in the ones that count.

    The snorkeling off the dinghy was on a reef in calm water on perfect day. We just dropped in. The water was the kind of clear that makes you feel like you’re floating in air, and the reef beneath us was alive in every direction. There were sharks – just a few of them, moving through at their own pace, curious in the way that sharks in healthy water tend to be. Not scary. Just present, going about their business, occasionally glancing over at the strange creatures flapping around above them. The kids were cool about it. I (Susanna) was excited and pretending to be calm, which is basically the same thing. 

    We missed catching a fish that day. We could have speared it upon first sighting, but then our snorkel adventure would be over almost as soon as it started, so we passed on it. We learned lessons about patience and timing – both fishing and snorkeling. We came back with no fish but also no regrets.

    And then there was the beach.

    I don’t know exactly what set it off. The sunlight, maybe, or the particular shade of the water. Perhaps it was the kids playing on the paddle board while Barrett enjoyed the swing over the water. Maybe it was just the accumulated weight of weeks of actually doing the thing we’d talked about doing for so long. I was sitting there in a hammock, and it just hit me. The beauty of it. The reality of it. We were here. We had made it here. This was our life, at least for now, and it was more than I had let myself believe it would be. 

    I cried on a beach in Green Turtle Cay, and I’m not even a little embarrassed about it.

    That’s the thing about staying longer than you plan. You get past the logistics and the anxiety and the learning curve, and somewhere in the middle of an ordinary afternoon you look up and realize the life you wanted is the one you’re in.

    Next up: Spanish Cay, a broken generator, and the unexpected gift of being stuck wsomewhere beautiful.

    stingrays at Coco Bay
    a mural spotted on a walk up the hill in GTC
    GTC was about more than just playing – we did boat and life chores too. Here: propane fills.
    we enjoyed a celebratory lunch at GTC Marina
    We also did much-needed loads of laundry
    The kids with a new friend from Florida.
    Our goodbye to I’s on the Prize.
    The beach were it all finally felt real.
    The beach were it all finally felt real.
    Snorkeling from the beach.
    Abacos water is unreal,
    A SUP trip in Manjack Cay.
    drone shot over GTC
    the pool table at Sundowners – a fave hang out in GTC
    our first spear fishing excursion, mostly great snorkeling
  • Great Guana Cay: The One Where Everyone Showed Up (summer 2025 recap)

    Great Guana Cay: The One Where Everyone Showed Up (summer 2025 recap)

    There’s a certain kind of magic that happens in the Bahamas when your cruising world – which has been quietly overlapping with other people’s cruising worlds for weeks – suddenly collapses into the same anchorage during the same week. Great Guana was that place for us.

    We’d been following Driftwood’s path since Bimini, randomly. A family from South Carolina, also on a sailboat, also doing the thing for the summer. We waved at each other in an anchorage in there and then jumped into a blue hole together in the Berries – the way you do when you recognize kindred spirits and the timing just lines up. It lined up in Great Guana again.

    And then there was Peaks. We’d connected with them during our intense crossing from the Berries to the Abacos through an online sailing family community – one of those friendships that exists entirely in a group chat until suddenly it doesn’t. We’d already had a reunion of sorts down near Lynyard Cay for Fourth of July fireworks after the long passage, but Great Guana gave us the real version: Nippers beach bar, a dad taxi on their dinghy, the kids all in the water together, the kind of afternoon that stretches out in the best possible way. 

    Nippers, if you haven’t heard us mention it before, is the kind of place that shouldn’t work as well as it does. A beach bar on a tiny Bahamian island, perched over the Atlantic side, with a pool and a pig roast on Sundays and music that carries across the water. It works completely. The Driftwood crew was with us for the pig roast – and for the afternoon rainstorm that rolled in with very little warning and absolutely zero concern for anyone’s plans (including a wedding complete with rain soaked fireworks on the beach). We stood under whatever cover existed and laughed about it, which is more or less the correct response to weather in the Bahamas.

    Grabbers, on the harbor side, had its own kind of energy. A little more tucked in, but no less special, the kind of place where the afternoon just slows down while the sunsets. Our Texas friends the Scotts – we’d spotted their flag coming into Lynyard, then crossed paths again at Elbow Cay almost by accident – made it to Grabbers on a Sunday and we met them there after a quick provision stop in Marsh Harbour. There was swimming, there was jumping off things, there was a swing post that the kids felt needed to be climbed to its full height. There were good drinks and the easy comfort of people you don’t have to explain yourself to.

    It was a lot of people, a lot of overlap, a lot of happy noise. The kind of week that, when you’re living it, feels almost too full – and then you get to the other side of it and realize that’s exactly what you were looking for when you decided to do this.

    More from the Abacos coming soon. Next up: Green Turtle Cay, and the afternoon that made me cry on a beach.

    the walking path to Nipper’s
    fire on the beach at Grabber’s
    vacation mode engaged
    beautiful beach
    sunset at the swing posts
    Texans unite!
    another beautiful beach