The name Bahamas comes from the Spanish “baja mar”, which means “shallow sea”. And shallow it is! The Great Bahama bank is a large submerged platform on the west side of the Berry and Exuma Islands. The Bank is often less than 16ft (4m), and scattered with boat-crunching coral heads. The depth plunges rapidly to 13,000ft (4,000m) in the surrounding seas.
Cruising in this area is quite technical and demanding. You have hundreds of small islands in a roughly north-to-south chain. On one side the shallow water with shifting sands and coral heads force you to be on a constant lookout. Some routes are better transited at high (or at least a rising) tide with calm waters and the sun above or behind you so that you can see the bottom (those conditions, of course, don’t happen every day). On the other side the deep ocean allows you to navigate on autopilot, but the prevailing winds can stir the water up to rough conditions. You can switch sides through a few narrow “cuts” between islands, but you better make well sure, before even attempting to pass, that the wind and current are in agreement… except that the only tool at hand is a tide table, which, in this convoluted geography is not enough to predict the currents. You have to be constantly aware of what weather is coming and understand how it’s going to limit your options.
We experienced some of those challenges in the Berry Islands, and were as ready as we could be to get to the The Exuma Cays, our main destination in The Bahamas. Taking advantage of a deep water route and a good breeze, we enjoyed a full day sailing to West Bay, a conveniently located stopover half way to the Exumas. West Bay is in New Providence Island, where the capital Nassau also is. It’s also known as Jaws Beach because some scenes of a Jaws sequel were filmed there. We rested a full day in that unremarkable anchorage (for our new standards), before embarking on the next leg.
The second leg was radically different from the first: shallow water, no wind, and thus no sailing. However, when we reached an even shallower area know as White Bank, for the first time I didn’t mind that we couldn’t sail, because the dead calm gifted us with magical underwater scenery. As if we were flying barely above the ground, a surreal world passed underneath us, with grass, sand ripples, rocks, coral, star fish, snails, rays and other fish. And a dolphin. It went on for miles and miles, hours and hours.