We ventured off the official Loop route to visit Christian’s old haunts: up the Neues River to New Bern then back down to Oriental. This area is the origin story for our Great Loop adventure… Christian learned to sail in these waters.
Okay, not bears, but I think the owners of these properties wanted equal time…
Tryon Palace
So said the woman at the Beaufort Historical Society who suggested it as a walking tour; she was not wrong. The site was established in 1709 and contains remains from the Indian wars from that period as well as, later, members of the United States Colored Infantry (former slaves who fought on the Union side during the Civil War), sea captains and sailors whose ships sank off the coast of North Carolina and, of course, residents of Beaufort.
The Old Burying Ground is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now managed by the Historical Society.
Many of the headstones have lost their identity with age. 1756 is the oldest legible date but not the oldest grave.
Old wisteria vines and trees guard the gravesites in the Old Burying Ground.
The Historical Society provides a map to tour the Burying Ground. It contains stories about the graves and their occupants …
… Captain John Hill (1817-1879) We liked the inscription on his headstone:
“The form that fills this silent grave
Once tossed an ocean’s roiling wave,
But in a port securely fast,
He’s dropped his anchor here at last.”
The Ann Street Methodist Church
Or summering in South Carolina. We added four additional weeks to our wonderful one week vacation on Kiawah Island which is why we hadn’t moved if you’ve been watching. The add was not altogether voluntarily and certainly not planned; we limped into the marina with a slipping transmission and no windlass for the anchor. We assumed that we would enjoy the week on Kiawah while waiting for the replacement parts, complete the repairs then move on. I think the shipping companies went on vacation, too…
If nothing else, this adventure has taught us to be flexible and, as all of the envious vacationers we met in the marina were quick to remind us, there are worse places to get stuck…
Possibly the most visually pleasing week we have spent traveling. The Atlantic ICW winds its way through Georgia bordered by endless marsh grass flats which spill into wide open bays. At the last of the bays, the Savannah River intersects the ICW and we made a trip up river to sample this southern jewel.
The remains of Dungeness, an old Carnegie estate.
The estate included recreational fields, a carriage house, a dairy barn, multiple cisterns and gardens. Today, the only inhabitants are the wild horses who roam freely through the park.
The journey up the ICW. At each of the bays the twisting river led to, sandbars at the inside of the mouth of the bay hosted “boat parties”.
No more white sand beaches, amethyst green water and skies as high as the horizon is wide…
Here, finally, are the unspoiled Out Islands of my, largely inaccurately, “imagined Bahamas”. This string of cays also marks our path to West End, Grand Bahama Island, the end of our Bahamas adventure. We already miss the sunsets over the water…
Probably not accurate to call Treasure Cay an Out Island, as it is connected to Grand Abaco Island; the anchorage reminded us of Marco Island, FL. The magnificent beach was deserted though and we only saw a few others for the two days we were there.
As the crow flies, the distance between Treasure Cay and Green Turtle is about 6nm. There is, however, a sand bar between the two where depths are less than 2ft. To get from one cay to the other requires a trip outside of the Bank, around Whale Cay, which adds 14nm and required us to wait for the winds from the East to calm. Damage from Hurricane Dorian was still more visible here than in Hope Town, but less than in Marsh Harbor.
We took the dinghy in search of snorkeling opportunities and wound up circumnavigating a small island called Crab Cay. We tried to watch the lunar eclipse from here but only got glimpses of it through the many clouds.
Powell Cay is our favorite of the Abacos. There are two great hikes on the cay, one to the bluff overlooking the anchorage and the other to the Atlantic side of the island. The beach here is spectacular and we spent a couple of hours enjoying it!
A close second as the best of the Abacos… the hike here was to what is known as the Naming Tree, where cruisers leave their mark with all sorts of flotsam and driftwood. I was sort of dismayed at the intrusion of civilization, thinking that visitors were supplying the medium, until I learned that this is beach trash, much of it floating from Haiti after storms.
This cay turned out to be much more exposed to the prevailing wind so we were not able to go ashore. After carrying the drone through the Bahamas, it earned its keep this day.
If you look at a map of the Abacos you will see why this archipelago is my idea of the Bahamas… Two large islands protected by a string of barrier cays, all of which are less than a half a day’s sail from one another. And we have been sailing, too, with nice winds and generally calm seas. We ping-ponged northward between Great Abaco Island & the barrier cays and are now waiting for our chance to get through the Whale Cut to the northern Abacos.
Our first anchorage after leaving Little Harbour… Tilloo Bank is a large, shallow bank where the locals come and beach their boats to “tailgate”. There is a single habitable house on the cay, all the rest still badly damaged from the hurricane. Tilloo Bank sits on the edge of the Pelican Cays Land and Sea Park so we returned here after visiting Sandy Cay. Sandy Cay may have the famous “coral garden” and may be one of the best spots for snorkeling but it is not a comfortable anchorage…
This is the other side of Tilloo Cay! You will see this theme with all the barrier cays; the Sea of Abaco side has had almost no swell while the Atlantic side has been roiling.
Scars from Dorian are everywhere… this would have been the view from the house in which we stood to take this photo.
Residents of Tilloo Cay and Tilloo Bank
Did someone move Oaks Bluff or Edgartown to the Bahamas while we have been gone??? Aside from the hurricane damage, you could be confused about where you are…
Kerosene is burned to create the light and the lens rotation is achieved by hand-cranking a weight up the tower, every evening. The actual lens of the lighthouse floats in a bed of mercury!
Hope Town is much further along than Marsh Harbour in erasing the traces of Dorian but not quite finished… Most of the rental properties seem to have been full, both restaurants were open and the grocery store had full shelves and fresh baked goods every day.
Spectacular White Sound Beach on the Atlantic side of Elbow Cay; the ocean laid down for Mother’s Day and we finally got to swim in the Atlantic.
We anchored at Black Point Cay after another visit to Sandy Cay. Black Point is on the Great Abaco Island side of the bight. No signs of habitation here yet but still crystal waters and interesting coral formations in the little bay.
Man O’ War (MOW to the locals) was once the boat building heart of the Bahamas and it is still home to Albury Brothers, a boat building dynasty. We were fortunate to have spent an hour or so with the proprietess of the local cafe who manages the little MOW museum and serves delectable mulberry turnovers. She confirmed our perceptions of MOW; it is a tight, residential community, insulated from the tourism upon which the other cays rely.
Great Guana’s claim to fame are the beach bars – Grabber’s and Nipper’s, both of which we visited. Of the two, Nipper’s had the better location with the Atlantic beach… and the radler.
A real, live rainy day to catch up on where we are… or, actually, where we were. Lynyard Cay and Little Harbour were our rewards for the long wait and the long passage across the Northwest Providence Channel to the Abacos.
Little Harbour is the southern most harbor on Great Abaco Island. It is a small, well-protected harbor with an internationally renowned foundry and one of the best beach bars around.
The molds are attached to “trees”, or venting structures, for the spruing, slurry and burnout processes – these are the processes which create the hollow mold of the original artwork.
The finished molds are brought up to temp while the casting material is prepared.
Molten bronze is poured into the molds.
The scale of some of the art produced here…
The Little Harbour lighthouse once stood sentinal to guide mariners through the rocky shoals which form the harbor entrance. Today it is an easy hike to a sweeping view of both the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic.
Waiting for weather (again 🙄) kept us in the Berry Islands for another 10 days. We moved from the anchorage to the marina so we could break out our bikes and explore… and, actually, happily, we came to really like Great Harbour Cay and our time spent there. The island’s history is fascinating, we met, and traded stories with, fellow travelers and discovered Great Harbour Cay’s stunning beaches.
The island is only 7 miles in length and 2.5 miles wide. It runs approximately north-south between the Great Bahama Bank and the Northwest Providence Channel (open to the North Atlantic Ocean which is why we were waiting…) It is considered one of the “out islands” as commercial development is minimal and it is not easy to access except by small plane, or, of course, by boat.
We rented a noisy, finicky golf cart to find Shelling Beach on the east side of the island. At the end of a bumpy road, through everything but beach vegetation, we ended at the peninsula with Shelling Beach on one edge and the exit from Little Shark River on the other.
The clearest water and the whitest sand since Santa Rosa Island
You can cut through the cays from the Great Bahama Bank to the Atlantic by traveling the Little Shark River. By dinghy. Only at high tide. We were up for the challenge and headed out the day when the east winds were too strong to do much else on that side of the island. Unfortunately, even the high tide was too low so we visited a beach on the Great Bahama Bank side of the cay.
There is a wonderful history of Great Harbour Cay at https://www.greatharbourcaymarina.com/history which details the rise and fall of the island’s development by outsiders. What is left today are the physical ruins of The Clubhouse & The Sugar Beach Lodge and the stories of famous people who sunbathed here…
The spectacular Sugar Beach Caves are a mini version of the northern California coastline!
We attempted the Little Shark River dinghy trip a second time with some veteran Loopers and this time we were successful!
Come along on a dinghy ride and explore part of Cistern Cay’s western shore. The island is uninhabited now but was once home to some people the US’s DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) wanted to get to know…
© J Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi, 1970