Long Island is just that…a long island. It’s about 70 to 80 miles long depending on who you ask or what you read about it and about 3 miles wide at it’s widest point. We’ve been here before but last time we sailed and anchored on the east side of the island at Clarence Town. This adventure has brought us to Thompson’s Bay and the anchorage here is very nice. It’s a pretty good size bay and there is room for lots of boats. We’re sharing the anchorage with about 30- 40 boats in all and there’s still lots of room. This is a nice change from Georgetown where it’s a bit crowded for us.
One side of the sign in front of Chat-n-Chill
Before we left Georgetown we made our required stop at Chat-n-Chill for a visit and although it was really quiet we had a nice time.
Brian checking out the scenery at Chat-n-Chill
Brian and KB, owner of Chat-n-Chill
We’re once again liking Long Island. We met some more of our fellow cruisers at a beach get together and at Breezes the local hangout for get this … “the once a week happy hour” gee just think back at home most places have happy hour every night! Here it’s only once a week…different. It’s fun though, there are a few cruisers that are musicians, they bring in their instruments and throw together a jam session and we all have a great time.
Jenn, Brian, Teddy and Brian
We met a nice couple Teddy and Brian, great people! We got to talking and mentioned that we were interested in visiting Hamilton Caves. Turns out that they were interested too and they happened to already have a rental car. They invited us to join them the next day for some cave exploring.
The caves were awesome and so much bigger than we expected. The tour lasted about an hour and was only $10 a person. Hamilton’s Cave is one of the Bahamas largest cave systems, most of it is about 50ft wide and over 10ft high. There were a couple of tight squeezes though as we traveled from one cavern to another. Had me worried for a minute or two because I’m a bit claustrophobic and I had a flashback to our cave adventure in Jamaica where we had to swim through a small tunnel out underwater to the river. That one was really tight. All was good though and I was thankful that these caves were pretty big.
Brian coming out of tight spot in cave
Our tour guide was Leonard Cartwright whose family owns the property. We explored the tunnels and writings on the wall left behind from the Lucayan Indians, the first settlers of the island. Leonard said that both his family and the Lucayan Indians had used the caves for shelter during hurricanes. The cave was way cool…so much exploring in areas that would be roped off or not accessible if this were a cave in the states. Here we got to explore and see so much, just the caves in their natural habitat. The tour was great and we highly recommend it to anyone that visits the area.
Bats just “hanging around”
After the tour we took a drive to the north end of the island had some lunch at Stella Maris and found another cave that the resort used for entertaining it’s guests…it was pretty cool too. We had a wonderful day exploring with our new friends.
So now we are just hanging out on the boat. Brian is still sanding, grinding, fiber-glassing and working on our repairs to Moon…an on going and forever project. She is a 40 year old plywood and fiberglass boat that has worked hard in her lifetime and we have to take care of her so that she can take care of us.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho, it’s the pirate’s life for me…
Not sure when we will be leaving Long Island. The winds had been pretty strong for the last couple of days and we are hoping to run into our friend Lance again who said he had plans on stopping here sometime in the near future. When the time is right we will raise the sails and head on out. Until then here we are.
🙂
Take care all.
Jennifer and Brian
Awesome!!!!