A Month in Eleuthera

Quick Real Time Update – June 18 2025

We’ve been back on the US east coast for a week-and-a-half, since June 8th. As I write this, we are sailing from St. Augustine, FL to Little River, SC with hopes to be in VA sometime next week where we can leave Luthien. We’ll be back in Denver for a few months over the summer. If you’re in and around Denver, we’ll see you soon!

A Month in Eleuthera

The locals pronounce it “e (like egg) – LOO – tra”. This is the next island south from Abacos. It runs from northwest to southeast and is about 75 miles long from tip-to-tip but less than a mile wide in many places.

Compared with Abacos, I would characterize Eleuthera as wilder, rougher, more sparsely populated, and more remote. Flights are less frequent and more expensive if you are flying in. There were fewer of the long sugar sand beaches and more rocky shoreline. There were nowhere near as many swanky beach houses or rowdy beach bars.

Terri’s No Good, Very Bad Day

One of the things I wanted to do when I started this blog was to present a realistic picture of all of the ups and downs of cruising. For all the idyllic beach days, there is the occasional horrible ocean crossing day. For every pig roast Sunday, there’s a disassemble the water maker day. It’s not 1:1 but there are def some bad days scattered in there.

We had one such day right at the end of April. On the days leading up that day we had a series of unfortunate events. 

The latest round of watermaker parts, that we had shipped to the Toneys so they could be our couriers, did not fix the watermaker. We spent several hot and sweaty days marching around Marsh Harbor looking for additional parts to no avail. So we were still having to conserve water and plan out where our next stop to refill the tanks was going to be. 

We had an absolutely brutal departure out of Abacos through the “North Bar Channel”. Without exaggeration, probably 10 foot seas with 4 second periods right on the bow. The boat was tossed violently. There was a lot of crashing with spray even up at the helm and everything inside the salon went flying. This lasted maybe 20 minutes.

The seas did calm down a little once we got out of the inlet, but not by much. That departure was followed by 8 hours of 6 ft seas on the beam, which caused the boat to rock side-to-side pretty aggressively. Super uncomfortable passage.

Luthien Rocks Side-to-Side with 6 Foot Seas on her Beam

Finally, once we did get to Eleuthera, the first several nights at anchor were very rolly, with lots of swell. It was also super windy – the wind was howling through the rigging all night and kept us awake. And on top of all that, we seemed to be on some kind of charter boat / motor yacht thoroughfare, so we were getting rocked by wake frequently. Ugggh.

I usually get up earlier than Terri, and on this particular morning, she was in tears when she came up from the cabin in the hull. Terri keeps a private mini-diary separately from this blog. I’m going to just copy her words from her diary, here:

Woke up this morning and it was just … all too much. Too much rolling, too much wind, too many days without a shower, too much worry about water, laundry, garbage, anchor, ….. and on.

She self-deprecatingly labelled this day “Terri Loses It”.

Fortunately, and we didn’t know it at the time, but most of the bad was behind us at this point and we were about to have a really great month.

Terrible Anchorage? Just Move!

This seems really obvious in hindsight, but it was a revelation to us at the time. After a couple nights on the west end of Russell Island, rolling with the ocean swell, getting blasted by wind, and rocked by motorboats roaring past us multiple times a day, we kind of looked at each other and said, “Uh, why are we staying here?”

We pulled out the charts and found a little bay less than an hour’s motor away that was well protected from both wind and swell, off the beaten path for any pig beaches, reefs, or fishing spots – so no motor boat traffic – and no other boats anchored there that we could see on AIS. So we just hopped over there for a night and had a very restful evening. There was a small settlement there called The Bluffs that had a tiny little grocery store where we refreshed our supply of Cheetos and Diet Coke.

We’ve resolved to be less patient with bad anchorages in the future.

The Devils Backbone

Despite my opening with “there are fewer swanky beach houses”, there is one particular area of Eleuthera, Harbour Island, which is pretty swanky. It has the famous pink sand beaches on the Atlantic side, with many upscale VRBOs, boutique resorts, and bars along the beach there. There are even largish (but not quite “super”) yachts in the marinas.

The vast majority of tourists just fly into the North Eleuthera Airport and take a water taxi to get over to Harbour Island. However, if you want to get there on your own boat, you need to transit the notorious (dun dun dun) Devil’s Backbone. This is a narrow passage (less than 100 yards wide, and 50 yards wde in some places) between the rocky beaches on the northern coast of Eleuthera and coral reefs just a little ways offshore.

To cross the Devil’s Backbone, people typically hire a pilot who knows the passage. We ended up hiring Captain Neil Curry, based on multiple recommendations on Facebook. As some know, our last experience hiring a captain wasn’t great. I’m pleased to report this was a whole different (enjoyable) experience.

Captain Neil arrived at Luthien in his little center console, just outside of Spanish Wells. I thought he would just lead us through the Backbone from his boat. But since we were his only clients that morning, he actually tied up to us, boarded Luthien, and sat at Luthien’s helm with us while we navigated the Backbone. He also brought us a bag of fresh johnny cakes, which are a bready pancake popular in the Bahamas and throughout the Caribbean. Yum!

It turned out Captain Neil has lived and worked in North Eleuthera his whole life and has been navigating the Backbone since he was a teenager some 50 years ago. He’s been a pilot since he was a young man and has piloted for numerous larger merchant vessels.

In addition to getting us across the backbone safely, he was a wealth of other knowledge. We got a lesson in visual navigation: how to spot reefs; how to tell which way the tide was flowing; how to look for deep vs shallow water. He also had all kinds of stories about wrecks that happened in the area, local history, and stories about stubborn merchant captains who didn’t listen to his advice and suffered some misfortune for lack of heeding it. “The Hondurans are the worst!” he says.

The Queen’s Baths

Son Liam and Daughter-in-Law Maggie came to visit us the week of May 4th! Very exciting! Rather than sail around the island like we had done with previous visitors in Abacos, for Liam and Maggie’s visit we picked a spot that was in a relatively secluded anchorage but central to various attractions and within a short dinghy ride of a relatively healthy reef. We stayed in that one spot the whole visit and dinghied and/or hiked to the various attractions.

During this visit we found one of the highlights of our entire time in the Bahamas, the “Queen’s Baths”. This is a rocky half-bowl eroded out of a cliff on the Atlantic side, maybe 50 feet high, 100 yards wide and 50 yards deep. You can hike down to the bottom of the bowl and explore all around it.

The open side of the bowl faces the open ocean. If you sail straight east from this spot your next stop is Africa. The cliff is relatively low here, such that the bottom of the bowl is maybe 10 feet above sea level at high tide. Big waves from the open ocean come rolling in, crash against the rocks, and spray the bowl, and anyone in it, with sea spray. It was beautiful, awe inspiring, and a hilarious fun time to see who was getting splashed.

Maggie Gets Splashed Real Good in The Queen’s Baths

Buddy the Racist Dog

One of the places we anchored at for a few nights was a settlement called Governor’s Harbor. This would be a tiny town by US standards but is one of the bigger settlements on Eleuthera. It had a decent sized grocery store. One day we decided to kill three birds with one stone: get a hike in for some exercise, wander around the town to see what little shops and sights there were, and do a grocery shop.

The hike was an out-and-back across the settlement which started and ended near the grocery store. Whilst passing the grocery store on the way out, we were joined by a dog. If you’re Canadian, and of a certain age, you might remember ‘The Littlest Hobo’. 

Come to find out, this dog’s name was Buddy and all the locals in town knew him. He is a typical “potcake dog”, which are common in the Bahamas and some islands in the Caribbean. He’s not a stray – “somebody” in town owns him and he has a collar – but he wanders the town freely and people feed these dogs by leaving their dirty pots out, which the dogs lick clean. Hence “potcake dog”.

Buddy followed us all around town, for over an hour. Even waiting for us outside shops as we went in, and resumed following us when we came back out. He had a super friendly demeanor, high stepping and wagging his tail. He seemed excited to be hanging out with us.

I’m calling him racist because he was super friendly to us, and other tourists, ie, white people. At one point a woman in an SUV – clearly a tourist – saw Buddy, pulled her vehicle to the side of the road and enthusiastically shouted “Hi Buddy!! Remember me!”. Buddy wagged his tail so vigorously his butt was also wagging. He crossed the road over to the woman and rolled over so he could get belly rubs. Hilarious.

However, when locals (ie, black people) came near, his demeanor changed 180 degrees. He started growling, baring his teeth and barked at the locals. One woman yelled “Oh no Buddy, don’t you come near me!”. Another man yelled “Stop it Buddy! I know where you live!”. 

We finished our hike, did our grocery shop, and Buddy was still waiting for us outside the grocery store. I had half a mind to go in and buy him a sausage or something, but we decided to just get back to the boat. Buddy parted ways with us at that point.

Later that evening, Terri and I are discussing the day’s events over dinner, and it occurs to us, wait a minute. Buddy picked up our trail at the grocery store and parted ways with us at the grocery store as well. He’s super friendly to white people but growls and barks at black people.

This dog is waiting by the grocery store for white people to come by in the hopes he’ll get a handout. And he is playing the long game – he will follow you for an hour all around town for it. 

He gets food and belly rubs from the white people, but the black people yell at him.

That is a smart dog! But also kind of racist?

Lenny Kravitz’s Airstream

As we travelled along the coast of Eleuthera, we saw, incongruous with the mostly rocky shoreline, what appeared to be maybe a 100 yard stretch of perfectly manicured white sand beach. Instead of the usual pine brush characteristic of the island, this beach had evenly spaced majestic palm trees. There was some kind of a small pavilion just off the beach as well. We figured this was probably a resort of some kind. However, there was no one on the beach that we could see. Not even empty beach chairs.

Sometime later, we notice there is an Airstream trailer tucked up on the beach, just inside the treeline. We’re like, what would an Airstream be doing on a beach in Eleuthera like that? So we Google “Airstream on the beach in Eleuthera”. Turns out, Lenny Kravitz famously has an estate on Eleuthera and he keeps an Airstream there on the beach, which he sleeps in. Ding! Is that Lenny Kravitz’s airstream??

Yup. We wandered into a nearby restaurant and there are photos on the wall of Lenny Kravitz with various locals, with that bar’s decor in the background. So I ask the waitress, “Does Lenny Kravitz come to this bar often?: She says, “Yes, that’s his place across the road and he comes in here occasionally.” Ha!

Then, on the last day at that particular anchorage, we can see a slim black man with long hair walking along the beach accompanied by a slim woman in a bikini. Later that night, music starts up in the pavilion and carries on for a couple of hours past sunset.

So I am going to say, we were anchored a few hundred yards from Lenny Kravitz’s airstream, and he was there while we were there!

Cape Eleuthera

Our last days in Eleuthera were spent at a marina, so we could catch up on laundry and fill up with water, and diesel. (The watermaker was STILL not working at this point). This was a really interesting few days for us.

First of all, this marina is in the middle of nowhere, on the very southwest tip of the island. There are no other big towns, hotels, or airports around there. A lot of the marina (most of it) looked relatively new and was in excellent condition. There was a lot of construction going on: a new swimming pool; additional docks; and condos around the marina. There was clearly a lot of money going into this place. Where was it coming from, we wondered?

We bumped into a fellow at the marina bar and had our answers. He was a corporate Disney employee and was at the marina on business, staying at one of the condos there. Disney has purchased some 900 acres of the southern tip of Eleuthera and turned it into a destination for their cruise ships, including a dock and causeway, private beach, water park, restaurants and bars, and day-use cabanas.

Interestingly, there are no overnight accommodations at the Disney property. So when the Disney corporate employees have business to conduct there, the nearest overnight accommodations are the condos at the marina. Business has been very good for that marina since Disney moved into the neighborhood!

The water in the marina itself was very clear. Usually marina water is muddy and gross, even when the marina is just around the corner from a beautiful beach that has clear water. And there were a lot of fish inside this marina. We saw schools of sergeant majors, schoolmaster snappers, and blue tangs. There were also several resident nurse sharks that alternated between sleeping right beside our boat and making their rounds around the perimeter of the marina.

Nurse Shark on Patrol

There was a beautiful 5 mile loop hiking trail that started and ended at the marina. A portion of that trail ran right along the small rocky cliffs along the shore line, and included this (also new) viewing platform that we stopped at. That platform offered beautiful views and a very refreshing ocean breeze.

Finally, just outside the resort, there is “The Island School”. Apparently, this is a somewhat niche school that teens can attend for a semester or a summer. The school offers education in scuba diving, marine biology, environmental conservation, and so on. It is a boarding school where students stay on campus for the entirety of their semester. They apparently have a pretty rigorous daily PE program. Students are encouraged to “disconnect from their cell phones” for the duration of their stay at the school.

This might be a really interesting experience if you know a young adult who loves the ocean and is interested in marine biology and/or conservation! https://islandschool.org/

Epilogue

I could probably have gone on for another 4 pages about that month in Eleuthera. There were also swimming pigs, turtles and rays, snorkeling, my first fishing attempts (unsuccessful) etc etc. Anyways, suffice to say, it more than made up for the ‘no good very bad week’ at the end of April. We were sad to leave.