Once again I decided to take a risk and head north using a route that looked a little shallow on the charts. We hung out in Little Farmers until 1105 when I saw a monohull come south through the inside route. I called him to see what depths he saw and it was "nothing less than 7 feet". So, I thought it was time.
We released our mooring line and worked our way north through the inside "banks" side. Everything was going well until we were about a mile north when I hit bottom between the north end of Little Farmers and Oven Rock . From our vantage point, you could not really see the deep spot, so I decided to head for the deeper spot that Navionics showed. Most people advise you not to rely on Navionics, but I found Navionics to be more conservative than the Explorer Charts. In this case, Navionics worked for me and we found deep water again.
Once we cleared the shallow areas, we had a beautiful sail in a SE wind along the west side of Great Guana Cay, which is a long island with lots of secluded anchorages along the western shore. In other words, great for easterly winds.
We continued northwest up to Black Point Settlement. Many people told us this was very nice and one of the most popular stops in the Exumas. We arrived on a Sunday so everything seemed to be closed. So we went back to the boat, planning to return the next day.
We were anchored in a very pretty spot in the anchorage in about 11 feet of water. The anchorage is large and protected from all directions except westerly winds (SW-W-NW). We grilled on the boat and enjoyed the scenery.
The next day we started slowly and watched the activities in the anchorage. We noticed lots of high-speed tour boats coming and going. We finally got our act together and dinghied ashore for provisions. The grocery stores offered limited supplies and choices and were often closed for periods of time.
We did have lunch at Lorraine's, which was packed with tour boat people who were dumped there just as we arrived. Fortunately, the tour people ate from a buffet while we ordered from the menu. The food was excellent.
Lorraine's mother lived in a house behind the restaurant and she we famous for baking Bahamian bread, so we stopped over there. We tapped on the front door and heard a tiny voice yelling "Come in!". We found Lorraine's mom standing in her kitchen in the back of the house with several loaves of bread on the counter. She let us pick our loaf, which was still hot out of the oven. She was so nice. She is one of the highlights of Black Point.
To be honest, I was a little disappointed in Black Point. We did not find much of interest there and many of the people on the streets did not seem that friendly or happy, unlike most of the other cays in the Exumas. So, given the forecast of an approaching front which included west winds, we decided to move on to Staniel Cay the next day.
