CHARTERING EXUMAS: Bahamas’ Far Islands, cruising far from the madding crowd
Story by Mark Stevens
Photos by Sharon Matthews-Stevens
From my vantage-point atop Boo Boo Hill, a rocky outcropping overlooking steep slopes decorated with emerald foliage and the occasional cactus, I can see the bay—Warderick Wells— where our chartered cat is moored.
The surrounding waters are downright cerulean: turquoise and jade, aquamarine and cobalt further out to sea.
This cruising ground—the Exumas, a district in The Bahamas made up of 365 islands and coral cays—is sheltered to the east by a necklace of scantly populated islands. Even so, there’s no shortage of activity. On our last day we drop the hook for lunch and dinghy ashore to a beach occupied by a colony of Bahamian rock iguanas. Here at Warderick Wells nurse sharks constantly circle our boat in search of lunch, at another anchorage sea turtles surface mere metres from our chartered Dream Yacht Charter catamaran, a seaworthy Fountaine-Pagot 42’ named Eden Blue.
Now I look west over waters with an average depth of 5 metres; now I turn and scan the lonely ocean to our east. Here in an anchorage we share with only five other boats, it strikes me that this is paradise with a capital “P”.
It also strikes me that when you charter out of the Dream Yacht Charter base in the Nassau marina it shares with the Moorings, plying the waters nuzzling the shores of the Exumas, boasting a year’s worth of islands and cays, you’re cruising far from the madding crowd.
