After we left the Glass Window Bridge, we spent a few days in the protection of Hatchet Bay catching up on chores and having drinks with friends, then we moved to Governor’s Harbour and had a huge day of exploring!

1.27 – Monday

We took it slow this morning before our move over to Hatchet Bay. We have some weather coming and Hatchet offers 360° of protection, since you have to enter a very narrow rock cut into the large bay. I know this doesn’t look too bad in calm weather, but we did it a couple days later in some strong, choppy waves and I white-knuckled it the whole way in then!

As we entered the rock cut we saw a spotted eagle ray and a pufferfish. We put the boards in the water, committing to a short paddle before lunch. Instead we ended up spending over an hour exploring just all along the rock wall, inside and outside the cut. There was so much sealife! We saw a queen angelfish, a queen parrotfish, a porkfish, and many sergeant majors. The sergeant majors aren’t scared of us at all so it’s easy to get photos of them. We also saw a giant spotted eagle ray, some barracuda, and lots of purple sea fans.

When I got back to the boat and started looking at photos I realized pretty much all of them were unsalvageable due to the cloudiness of the water. Sorry for the bad quality!

1.28 – Tuesday

Today is Kyle’s birthday, so we had bacon for breakfast. I started some sourdough pizza dough so we could do pizza for dinner.

Our friends from s/v Consort came over for dinner and we had the most amazing sourdough pizza from scratch. It was definitely the best pizza I’ve ever made, and good food with good friends is a great way to celebrate Kyle!

1.29 – Wednesday

Kyle was working in the cockpit and I was inside when we heard a small explosion, almost like a gun going off. The Isle board popped a huge hole in one of the seams. It was mounted on the side deck, in the sun. We only inflate them to 12 psi (not the recommended 15 psi) so it shouldn’t have been overpressured but the glue seems to get soft in the sun. We’re pretty disappointed, we love how lightweight and easy this board is, but we’ve only had it for three years and this is the second repair we’ve needed to do.

That afternoon we saw Consort hanging out on floaties, then our friends from NFA joined them via dinghy. We paddled over on the SUP, then s/v Galacia joined too! As it started to get dark we invited everyone back to our cockpit to keep the party going, and everyone brought snacks. We joked that you know you’re special when someone brings chips over to your boat, because chips are so expensive down here – it shows they really care! That was an awesome night of hanging out with people, and we love that we have such a great hosting space (plus if we keep inviting people over it means the boat will always be super clean!).

1.31 – Friday

We were up with daylight to start our trip over to Governor’s Harbor. The water was extremely calm, so we motored the three hour trip. There were lots of jellies in the water, and no fish.

Before we even anchored I had pulled a plastic bag out of the water. This is the first time I’ve shut down the engines as soon as the anchor was set because I was worried about sucking up a plastic bag into our intake. There was tons of trash around the harbor. After we anchored, I hopped on the paddleboard to check out our swing radius and make sure we had plenty of depth around us. I ended up playing a game of plastic-bag-or-jellyfish, and hauled the plastic bags bag to the boat to add to our trash pile.

We ate lunch a little early then packed up the backpack to go exploring. The plan was to walk up the giant hill across to the pink sand beach, then come back and explore town, and on our way back to the boat pick up some groceries.

At the top of the hill we had a great view of the road, with a sneak peek of Hobbes through the trees. As we continued I saw a bunch of trees in a yard that looked familiar…aren’t these a houseplant in Michigan? I’m not sure what they’re called.

We made it over to the softest sugar sand we’ve seen since that day in the Berries, and it was tinged pink! This beach used to be Club Med, now it’s local to the French Leave Resort.

A lot of the “pink sand beach” photos are heavily photoshopped to emphasize the pink, in reality this is what the pink sands look like (the rock is coral and it was very lightweight!).

We kept walking along the beach to an area of marl and breaking waves, and there were two blowholes in the marl that released huge sprays of water. Those areas are really interesting to explore, but we’ve never seen much sealife in the tide pools.

On our way back across the hill I spotted a kitten and coaxed it over for some pets. It was pretty friendly, it didn’t seem feral. When we wandered away, it starting crying loudly and I felt bad. Then one of the neighbors caught us and said “that kitty lives just around the corner and she’s well-taken care of, she’s just a good actress!” At this point I should mention that most of the people we’ve seen here seem to be tourists or expats, it’s a surprisingly popular place to visit. I didn’t expect this kind of demographic!

We explored the town, and when we saw a tourist office we stopped in for a map. They gave us the best map I’ve ever seen, with the whole of Eleuthera, plus maps of the bigger towns, and it even had a fish ID guide which is amazing! Most guides include all Atlantic reef fish, so to have a specific Eleuthera guide makes identification so easy!

Armed with our map, we found a bakery where we found some fresh coconut bread! Then we continued wandering to the Governor’s Harbour Library.

It was a really cool building, well over a hundred years old, and we chatted with the librarian for a while. She told us we have to find the restaurant on Staniel Cay (in the Exumas) because her son works there! Everyone we’ve talked to all day has been incredibly friendly.

As we walked along the waterfront back towards the grocery store, we saw a yellow stingray (easily identifiable with our new map!) swimming along the concrete wall in just a few inches of crystal clear water, she was practically posing for an awesome photo!

At the grocery store we picked out some eggs, etc. so we can make French toast with our coconut bread, then saw that it was cash only. We thought we’d had plenty of cash along, but we only had $5 and we spent that on the bread, so we put our things back. There was a little café overlooking the harbor with a perfect porch, and they took credit cards, so we ordered a couple Kaliks. This is the best beer I’ve had since we got to the Bahamas, not because Kalik is anything special, but because it was the perfect atmosphere and the perfect way to relax after a long hike.

Along our explorations today we gleaned a little more information about the famous Governor’s Harbour Fish Fry that happens every Friday night. Don’t bother showing up before 8pm, it’s a mix of locals and tourists, there’s a limbo contest(?)! We needed some food to tide us over, so I made jalapeno poppers and Kyle put them on the smoker. By the time they were ready we were pretty much ready to head in to the fish fry, so we scarfed some down and then headed to shore.

The fish fry is a fundraiser, so I was a little more forgiving when my fish was burnt and the mac’n’cheese was not great. The real draw of this party is the rum bubbas (which will kick your ass) and the atmosphere!

We joined a picnic table with a couple from London and chatted with them a bit, but when our food was gone we wandered around. The DJ was warming up the dancing crowd, and I think this text conversation sums up that part of the evening!

While the DJ was hyping up the limbo contest, Kyle was chatting with a local guy named Sam. He asked if there’s someone who wins the limbo contest every week, and Sam shyly nodded and said “Me!” So now we had to stay and watch! The cell phone doesn’t do great with action shots after dark, but here’s Sam doing his limbo thing!

It was a really fun night, and I actually loved Governor’s Harbour. I wish we could have stayed longer, but since the anchorage has almost no protection and the wind is about to pick up, we have less than 24 hours here.

2.1 – Saturday

We still needed groceries so we headed in to shore first thing this morning. We hadn’t explored part of town near the commercial docks so we wandered in that direction first. There really wasn’t much to see there, we were surprised that the prime waterfront real estate was in such bad shape, but it looks like that’s starting to change.

We got our groceries then back at the boat we raised the main and then pulled up the anchor to head back to Hatchet Bay!