We head for Harbor Island the Monday after Easter. It’s a nice enough day to sail and we are headed north east which should mean a perfect sail angle from the southeast trade winds. Of course, the winds are out of the north east, though, so we have to motor through. That’s kind of how Harbor Island treats us the whole time – nice enough, but constant little disappointments.
Passing through Current Cut
As we approach Harbor Island, we need to pass through a narrow section of water cutting between two pieces of land. This is known as Current Cut and has quite a reputation of being a tricky passage given that the current passes through here at up to 4+ knots speed. We read up on several reviews, some of which strongly recommend waiting until slack tide. We’re still not great at our tide tables though, and never have had much patience – so we decide we’re going to pass through right away. We notice that the current appears to be moving from east to west, which is the same direction that we are headed, so we don’t have to worry about it pushing against us.
Tangent: Any amount of current can be tricky depending on how it is moving and what you’re trying to do. A current at 2 knots or above, though, is something that you begin to give due respect and appropriately evaluate within your decision making process. There are many sailboats that might only travel at 5 knots under motor power (we’re often closer to 6-7 knots). If there is a 4 knot current going in the opposite direction of your 5 knot travel, then you’re effectively only moving at 1 knot in the desired direction. Initially, this doesn’t seem to be an issue – just slow traveling. However, the boat will begin to lose steering power when less than about 2-3 knots. It appears that this is where the real danger of Current Cut is – going against the current and losing control of your steering, while possibly being pushed into the nearby jagged land. If you were to wait until slack tide – for example, the exact point of high tide as it’s switching to begin letting the tide out. (e.g. moving towards lower tide). At slack tide, the current comes to a stand-still as it is getting ready to switch directions.
Going with the current proves to be quite fun! We enter the area doing about 6-7 knots and at the fastest point we are going over 11 knots (that’s over 12 miles per hour!). Pretty neat. Monster and I snap a couple photos as we pass through. It’s quite a short area, so the whole thing is only a matter of minutes.
Meek’s Island is the new Staniel Cay
A few miles after passing through Current Cut, we approach our destined anchorage for the night. There are a few other boats already settled in, but still plenty of room. We nose our way towards the front of the pack (not sure why everyone is so far back?), and successfully set our hook on the first try. Next, we launch the dinghy and get little Monster to her much desired beach. The beach itself is nice enough, but has quite a bit of trash and is obviously a local spot complete with some torn-up, old furniture.
Just around the island a bit, is another beach where a local group has copied the infamous pigs of the Bahamas (originally located on Staniel Cay, Exumas). You can now swim (or rather just feed and pet) pigs of the Bahamas on Meek’s Island as well. A bit annoying and probably bad for the pigs in my opinion, so we don’t support it or stop by. We do motor by slowly in our dinghy, though, and it appears the pigs may be kept in a fenced in area until a tour boat shows up at which point they are let out and all run over to a table on the beach where there is clearly food. We’ve heard that these pigs have not yet learned to swim out to the boats as have the ones at Staniel Cay.
Snorkeling attempt at Egg Reef
We’ve read nice things about the snorkeling and even diving around Harbor Island. There are supposed to be an unreal number of ship wrecks around the northern edge of the island – mostly along what is appropriately named, the Devil’s Backbone and also the adjoining Egg Reef. From our anchorage at Meek’s Island, we feel that we can make it over to Egg Reef in our dinghy, so we set out hoping for some great snorkeling.
We definitely don’t find it. We do see some areas of coral, but it’s patchy and nothing that impressive. There are also 2-3 foot waves in the area, which are not the most conducive to snorkeling. Don’t get me wrong, if we see something impressive, we’d make it work – but this was pretty lack luster when it comes to reef and marine life. After a while of searching we decide to just head back to our boat.
Getting out to and back from the reef area is pretty neat, though. The water is extremely shallow for most of the ways and the bottom topography changes from sand to grass to rock, which causes the water to appear different colors. We snap a couple photos, although they never seem to do the water justice.
Note: after later talking to some locals, it appears we may have missed the “best” part of Egg Reef which has a wreck that sticks up out of the water and is further south than we went. If we were back in the area, I might try again, but definitely wouldn’t factor it into our plans.
Spanish Wells
After two nights anchored at Meek’s Island, we decide to head into the town (or area?) of Spanish Wells. We’re getting a bit low on water (no our water maker still doesn’t work, and probably never will), so we call in to a marina. We are assigned a slip number and have a nice, easy time getting into said slip with the help of the dock master. This feels like a solid win since we’ve still only docked in a slip 3 times. First order of business (as always when arriving at a marina) is to get the shore power hooked up and the air conditioning turned on! Most days at anchor, it actually isn’t too bad without AC because our boat faces into the wind and a nice breeze comes through our open hatches. When at a dock, though, there is significantly less wind and you never know what angle it will be hitting your boat from. AC is a must when at a marina.
The marina is quite cute with lots of colorful, tropical flowers and a swimming pool. It’s pretty small, though, without much area for Monster to explore. We decide to take a walk through town to stretch our legs and see what all the fuss is about (Spanish Wells is talked about quite highly). It is very “Caribbean” with colorful purple, pink, and turquoise hoses lining the streets and tropical plants overflowing into the small paved roads. Just a short ways in, and we can already see the ocean again on the other side.
Based on raving reviews, we decide to eat dinner at a cute little outdoor restaurant, Budda’s Snack Shack. The kitchen is a large food truck, all seating is outdoors, and the regulars include two parrots. Monster isn’t quite sure what to make of the parrots, and neither are we since they won’t stop screeching – very annoying. After about 20 minutes, we are finally offered a couple of drinks which we gladly order. The food comes out surprisingly fast and is quite good – think burgers and fried food. Paying our check takes another 25 minutes though after we’re done. I get that there’s island time, but a food truck dinner should not take an hour and a half. Oh well. Monster really enjoyed her conch fritters.
Snorkeling attempt at Devil’s Backbone
As I mention above, Devil’s Backbone is a stretch of reef that is supposed to be just littered with wrecks. Of course, we were hoping to check it out – snorkel, maybe dive some of them. It’s a tricky area to navigate and highly discouraged to travel on your own. If you are wanting to take your boat through the backbone, it’s recommended to hire a local pilot to actually drive your boat since they know the reef so well. That all sounds like a lot of effort, so we decide we’ll just take our little inflatable dinghy over there instead. The waves are really not cooperating though, making for a slow and rough journey. After a while, we give up and turn around. Technically we made it to the edge of the area, but were once again only able to spot small patches of okay reef and never saw any wrecks.
We chalk this one up as another loss. No worries, though, as we have one more spot in mind!
Snorkeling attempt at Current Cut
That’s right – apparently, Current Cut (that I talk about passing through earlier) is very well known for drift diving. A boat will drop you off at one side of the cut and then you drift along with the current to the other side where the boat will pick you back up and do it all over again. Rather than paying hundreds of dollars to do this with a guide, we decide we will just do a muted version with our dinghy and snorkeling.
We anchor Sea Monster off a sandy beach nearby and then load our stuff into the dinghy. Multiple times, we drive up the cut and drift back down with the current – one of us with a mask on and face in the water, while the other keeps watch. Unfortunately, we just really don’t see much. We spot one turtle and one large barracuda but absolutely no sharks or huge groups of eagle rays as promised from other reviews. Larger animals are said to hang out at the mouth of the cut, in hopes of catching an easy meal being pushed through with the current. It makes sense. I just don’t understand why we didn’t see anything – and over about a two hour period of trying.
Harbor Island is pretty enough, but the lack luster opportunities to snorkel/dive leave us with little desire to return. I hear that the cape of Eleuthera island is supposed to have tons of great diving. My hopes are already soaring too high – but a girl can dream! Stay tuned to hear if we finally find some great dive spots to use our new Brownie hookah system.
