Great Inagua Bahamas

Leaving Grand Turk (the cruise ship dock is at the right of the picture)

Having cleared out of Grand Turk, we took our leave of the Turks and Caicos at 1310 on Sunday 27 January.  There was a brisk 20kt southeasterly wind; perfect beam reaching conditions for the start of the passage down to Great Inagua. With 2 reefs in the main and genoa we averaged over 7knots until shortly after midnight, when the wind dropped and we needed to raise full sail.

Great sailing and a glorious sunset

It was great sailing and with the decent breeze we made excellent progress, clearing most of the reefs by sunset and with only one small heading change required after dark.  The sunset was a glorious one.

Other than letting out the reefs and the wind dropping light enough to force us to motor for a few hours around dawn, the overnight passage was uneventful.  Nicky was on watch at dawn and prepared breakfast before taking her turn in the bunk.  A little late in the day (fishing is usually best at dusk and at dawn) I trailed a line and was rewarded at 1130 by the sound of the it screaming out.  Happily, Nicky heard my shouts for some help on deck and slowed the boat down enough to allow me to fight the monster on the line. And the swordfish I had hooked was seriously large.  It was so powerful that at one point I was genuinely concerned that it would swim off with all my line!  It took over half an hour to get this fella to the stern and hoisting it on board was almost more of a struggle – getting into a sword fight is always a bad idea!

The pictures aren’t pretty but the meat was fantastic!  Having killed the fish we let it bleed out behind BV before I took off all the prime fillets.

Swordfish butchered, and with a fridge full to bursting, I returned the less choice cuts to the deep

I think my fishmongering (butchering!) skills need a bit of work but I filled the fridge full of prime swordfish fillets and there was still plenty of meat left on the carcass.  We didn’t really expect to be able to eat all that I had taken off the fish so we didn’t feel too bad about returning the excess to the deep and some other hungry fish.

Great Inagua light

By about 1315 we were off the southwest corner of Great Inagua in a 15kt southerly with 1m high wind-blown waves. The main town on the island, Matthew Town, is on the west coast and the anchorage off it is open to all directions other than east.  Stopping there was not looking like a sensible option.

Passing Matthew Town, Great Inagua. The Haitian sailing boats were 
rolling around inside the small harbour and even the cat looked uncomfortable

We continued up the coast to the town. The island is extremely steep to on this shore and we had a great view of Matthew Town from the 10m contour line but the wind-blown waves and swell made the open roadstead untenable, even had we planned to stay on board: trying to get ashore to check in didn’t look at all safe.  There is a small harbour in Matthew Town but it is wide open to all points westward and our Bahamas book gives severe warnings about it, particularly about swell getting into the harbour.  Indeed, as we passed by we could see that the masts of several Haitian fishing boats, and of an American catamaran, in there were waving around wildly.  So we went with Plan B and sailed a few miles further north to anchor in Man O’War Bay.  This was perfectly sheltered in the prevailing conditions and we anchored in 8m over beautiful sand on dead flat, turquoise water.  Perfect!

There were 2 other yachts in the bay. One, was quite a long way off, close to the Morton’s salt plant, the other, Lucy Alice, was relatively close to where we had anchored.  Lucy Alice was flying an OCC burgee so we popped over in the dinghy to say hello, offer them some swordfish (how were we going to eat it all?) and ask them about checking in.  Our electronic map (maps.me) shows roads/tracks from Man O’War Bay to Matthew Town; could we reasonably walk there?  Unfortunately, Ian is allergic to fish, so our offer of swordfish was turned down, but we were invited on board for a beer and spent a couple of hours with him and Glenda mostly talking about Cuba, from where they had just come, and gaining some useful hints and tips in the process.  Unfortunately, Ian and Glenda hadn’t been able to get ashore on Great Inagua to check in so our queries on clearing customs went unanswered. Instead they were planning to head north to Abraham’s Bay on Mayaguana later that same evening to clear into the Bahamas there.  So, we returned to BV and an hour later wavedLucy Aliceon her trip north before settling down to the first of many excellent swordfish meals.

Continued below

Man O’War Bay, Great Inagua, Bahamas

Early in the morning of Tuesday 27 January, having topped up the main fuel tanks with 20 litres from one of our deck jerry cans, we motored south from Man O’War Bay and anchored off Matthew Town.  We got the engine on the dinghy, glad that we had moved very early, before the wind and waves had built, and then took the dinghy into the small harbour.  It’s quite an impressive facility, assuming that you don’t feel the need for decent shelter from the sea, with 2 large ramps, good concrete walls with plenty of rings and bollards on 2 sides (though one side looks as if it is reserved for police/customs vessels) and 2 or 3 strong wooden piers for yachts.  We left the dinghy tied behind the large catamaran on one of the wooden piers, chatted to the crew briefly, and set off to find the Customs and Immigration offices.

The building marked on our map as Customs & Immigration turned out to be a private house but the lady there was very friendly and pointed us in the right direction [Ed: we’re probably not the first people to have stopped by looking for officialdom!].  The offices we wanted were a few hundred metres further down the road in a large warehouse-style building, with Immigration at one end of the building, Customs at the other end and a liquor store between the 2.  The Immigration office was closed so we started with Customs, discovering a good-sized office with 4 officers sitting at desks and another 4 or so hangers on lounging around, all of whom were in the middle of a long and hilarious conversation.  We explained that we had arrived the previous evening but had been unable to get ashore to complete the formalities and that we planned to leave the day after next to spend 6 weeks or so in Cuba before returning to the Bahamas for an extended stay. Given the problems we had had with getting ashore at Matthew Town we asked to check in and out at the same time. This latter request was met with some resistance by the officer dealing with us but, happily, her immediate superior pointed out to her that since we would be retaining our cruising permit there was no reason why we shouldn’t check in and out at the same time.  Great relief!  We asked about Immigration and the senior officer, somewhat surprised to hear that the Immigration office was closed, called his equivalent and assured us that he would be with us soon.  We paid our dues (US$300) for a Bahamian cruising and fishing permit (valid for 6 months and permitting us exit and re-entry within 90 days) and then repaired to the liquor store to await the arrival of the Immigration team, make some additions to the cocktail cabinet and hide from the ferocious mosquito population.

The Immigration team took a while to appear but the liquor store proved a useful refuge for the duration and the Immigration formalities were quickly dealt with.  On our way back to the harbour we spotted a Bahamian Telecoms Company shop and bought a BTC SIM card for our phone which, we were assured, would remain valid for the next 3 months.  Great news!  Now we had internet access for our time in Great Inagua and we would also have internet and phone access as soon as we arrived back in the Bahamas after we had visited Cuba.

As we passed the government harbour en routeto find Great Inagua’s food shop(s?), we saw that a motor yacht had arrived and was being refuelled.  This was excellent news as it meant that we could get our jerry can refilled and not have to carry it the mile or so from the island’s petrol station.  We had to wait a while and I had to return to BV to fetch our funnel (the fuel bowser’s diesel nozzle was too large to fit into the filler of our can) but we got our jerry can refilled with diesel.  That meant that BV was absolutely topped up with fuel, which was just what we wanted before heading to Cuba where supplies can often be scarce.

We set off again for the food shop and at the internet hotspot outside the library bumped into Casey Kimberley, one of the crew on board the catamaran in the harbour.  We had a long chat with her and heard all about the Wharram catamaran that she and her other half (Shaun, another of the crew on the cat) are in the process of building, as well as of their experiences on this trip as crew from the Bahamas to Panama.

We eventually got to the shop much later than we had expected, only to find it much emptier than we had expected. Our Bahamas book says that Matthews Town is a Morton Salt company town and that, consequently, ‘Great Inagua benefits from much better provisioning options than any of the other Bahamian out islands’.  It’s a relative thing: ‘Much better provisioning options’ doesn’t mean ‘good’. This was a shame as one of the main reasons for stopping in at Great Inagua and going through the faff of clearing in (given that the wind conditions weren’t really playing ball enough to do a proper explore ashore) was to top up our food stocks prior to arriving in Cuba.  Researching sailing in Cuba, Nicky had repeatedly read that food shopping there can be very difficult.  The island is prone to shortages and whilst one shop may have good stocks of, say, cooking oil, another will have no cooking oil but will have good stocks of, say, tinned tomatoes.  She had also read that fresh fruit, veg and meat take some hunting down.  Having eaten most of the fresh food that we had bought in St Martin and Culebra she was keen to replenish those stocks and to buy a few last minute ‘just in case we can’t get this in Cuba’ items, such as some more strong flour.  Unfortunately, the shopping expedition wasn’t a roaring success (except on the beer-front!). There was virtually no fresh fruit and veg because the provisioning boat hadn’t been in for the best part of a week but we managed to buy more onions and potatoes and, after much hmmm-ing haa-ing, we also bought the last honeydew melon in the shop (for US$8!  Fresh food is costly in the Bahamas.)  On the store cupboard front we bought some more flour for making bread (flour, like eggs and potatoes, is said to be difficult to obtain), beer (utterly crucial!) and topped up our orange juice stocks (for vitamin C).  Shopping complete, we headed back to BV wondering just how bad provisioning was likely to be in Cuba.

View of southwest Great Inagua from our anchorage between the island and Molasses Reef

By the time we got back to her, BV was bucking up and down on her anchor.  The wind, as forecast, had gone round to the northwest so she now sat on a lee shore with metre-high wind-blown waves making life very uncomfortable.  Clearly, a return to Man O’War Bay was not a sensible option (also a lee shore) so we moved around to the reef strewn southwest corner of the island and worked our way inside Molasses Reef.  The bay here is very gently shelving and shallow a long way out, so we ended up anchored a long way from the shore.  There was still a little swell coming in from the south but, with the main body of the island between us and the waves coming in on the northwesterly wind, it was far more comfortable than sitting at anchor off Matthew Town [Ed: this confirmed by the crew of a yacht we met later on that had spent that night anchored off Matthew Town!] and we had a very peaceful night.

Great Inagua’s a very flat island and so, despite being a very long way from the telecoms mast which is located between the town and the airport, we still had an excellent BTC signal and were able to check emails and download the weather forecast from the internet easily. Studying the forecast, we decided that it would be better to leave for Cuba a day earlier than we had originally planned and, with that in mind, we made preparations for a mid-morning departure for Santiago de Cuba the next day, Wednesday 30 January.

Molasses Reef, Great Inagua, Bahmas