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.
Sailing Agora 