Destination guide

Sailing the Abacos, Bahamas

A chain of cays along one sheltered sea: Little Harbour, Hope Town, Man-O-War, Great Guana, Treasure Cay, Green Turtle, Manjack, Powell and Spanish Cay. A hundred miles, and never more than a morning between stops.

The Bahamas are 700 islands and some 2,400 cays, of which about thirty are inhabited. The Abacos are the north-eastern corner of that, and they are shaped in a way that makes them unusually good for a boat: a long, thin barrier chain of cays on the Atlantic side, the mainland of Great Abaco on the other, and between the two a sheltered strip of turquoise called the Sea of Abaco. The Atlantic breaks on the outside of the cays. Inside, the water is flat.

That is the whole point of the place. You sail from one cay to the next in an hour or two, in water that rarely has anything in it worth calling a wave, and you anchor off a beach that is empty because there is no road to it. The cays themselves are small loyalist settlements — pastel clapboard houses, a church, a boatyard, a bar — that have been building wooden boats and, for a long stretch of the nineteenth century, salvaging wrecked ones.

The catch is the water under you. The Sea of Abaco is shallow, the sandbanks move, and the tide runs to about 1.2 metres. You read the colour of the water and you plan the two or three shallow cuts around the tide. That is most of the navigation, and once you have the habit it is not difficult — it is just different from the Mediterranean, where you can point at a headland and go.

At a glance

The Abacos at a glance

Where: North-eastern Bahamas, about 180 nm east of Florida
Base: Marsh Harbour, Great Abaco
The cruising ground: The Sea of Abaco, sheltered between Great Abaco and the barrier cays
A week: Plan on 100 to 120 nm
Southern limit: Little Harbour, 15 nm from Marsh Harbour
Northern limit: Spanish Cay, 35 nm from Marsh Harbour
Best season: Mid-April to mid-August
Air / water: About 28 °C air, 23–28 °C water
Driest months: February and March
Tidal range: Up to 1.2 m
Hurricane season: 1 June to 30 November, peak August to October
The boat we took: Fountaine Pajot MY 37 power catamaran, 2 × 110 hp, flybridge, three cabins

Distances are along the Sea of Abaco and should be taken as orientation. Against the trade wind, or waiting on the tide for a cut, a leg takes longer than the mileage suggests.

The route

South to north, cay by cay

Marsh Harbour — the base

Everything starts here. Marsh Harbour is the third-largest town in the Bahamas and the only place in the Abacos with a proper airport, a supermarket worth provisioning at, and a fleet of charter boats. Flights in are from the United States or from within the Bahamas, so from Europe you connect through Nassau or a Florida hub. From the airport into the harbour is a short taxi ride.

The harbour itself is a wide, protected basin with several marinas around it. We lay at Harbour View Marina, walking distance from the shops, and paid about 115 US dollars for the berth with water. Take the first afternoon to provision properly: once you are out among the cays the shops are small, the prices are island prices, and the thing you forgot will stay forgotten for a week.

Aerial view of the marina at Marsh Harbour with catamarans on the docks in late afternoon light — Marsh Harbour — the only real town on the route, and where the week begins and ends.

Wooden dock at Harbour View Marina in Marsh Harbour with bougainvillea in flower — Harbour View Marina. Berth and water, about 115 dollars.

Palm trees and pastel houses along the waterfront at Marsh Harbour, Abaco — Walking distance to everything you need to buy.

Little Harbour — 15 nm south

The southern end of the cruising ground, and the one leg that goes the other way. Little Harbour is a near-circular pond behind a narrow entrance that you take near high water, with a handful of moorings inside and almost nothing on shore except the reason everyone comes: Pete's Pub, a sand-floored bar built out of driftwood and whatever the sea delivered, with a foundry and a gallery attached and the ceiling shingled in several thousand T-shirts.

Outside the harbour the Atlantic arrives on a limestone shore with no beach and no shelter, which is a useful thing to see once. It explains, better than any chart note does, why the cays face the way they do and why the whole route stays inside them.

Driftwood bar and gallery at Little Harbour, Abaco, hung with T-shirts and flotsam — Little Harbour. Built out of what the sea brought.

Sand-floored bar interior with thousands of T-shirts hanging from the ceiling — Every shirt was left by somebody who came in off a boat.

Rocky Atlantic shoreline with surf breaking on limestone at the southern Abacos — The ocean side. No beach, no shelter — which is the point.

Hope Town, Elbow Cay — 5 nm

The picture everyone has of the Abacos, and for once it is accurate. Hope Town is a narrow harbour on Elbow Cay, entered past a candy-striped lighthouse that is one of the last manually wound, kerosene-burning lights left anywhere. You climb it in the afternoon for the view straight down into the harbour: moorings packed in rows, pastel houses along the water, and the Atlantic on the far side of a cay barely three hundred metres wide.

There are no cars to speak of. You walk, and in twenty minutes you cross to the ocean beach, which runs for miles and is usually empty. The harbour is all moorings, no anchoring — pick one up early in the season and very early in high summer, because they go.

Aerial view of the red and white striped Hope Town lighthouse above the mooring field on Elbow Cay — Hope Town from the air. The lighthouse is still wound by hand.

The Hope Town lighthouse and keeper's house under a blue sky on Elbow Cay, Abaco — Worth the climb, and the ladder at the top.

View from the flybridge of a power catamaran entering Hope Town harbour past pastel houses — Coming in. The entrance is narrower than it looks from outside.

Empty white sand beach with surf on the Atlantic side of Elbow Cay — Twenty minutes on foot from the harbour to the ocean side.

Sunset over the mooring field at Hope Town with masts silhouetted against the sky — Evening in the harbour.

Man-O-War Cay — 6 nm

A working boatbuilding island, and the most conservative of the settlements: no alcohol sold on the cay, and the place has been building and repairing boats continuously for well over a century. Two long thin harbours run into the island — Eastern and Western — and the yard at the head of one of them is still the reason half the boats in the Abacos come here.

It is a quiet, tidy, slightly serious stop after Hope Town, and it is the best place on the route to look at how the local boats are actually put together. An hour walking the lanes with the workshops open is worth more than any museum.

Aerial view of the narrow twin harbours of Man-O-War Cay at dusk with boats moored inside — Man-O-War Cay. Two thin harbours cut into a boatbuilding island.

Fowl Cay and the reefs — on the way north

Between Man-O-War and Great Guana the barrier cays open out and the reef comes up close to the surface. Fowl Cay is a national park — no fishing, no taking anything — and it is the best snorkelling on this stretch: heads of coral in five or six metres with the light coming straight down through the water.

You will see sharks here. Nurse sharks under the docks, reef sharks over the coral, and nobody on shore thinks it is worth mentioning. They are not the problem; the sun is. Take the reef shirt.

Fowl Cay National Park sign on a bleached coral shoreline with the Atlantic behind — Fowl Cay is protected. Look, don't take.

A shark in clear shallow water beside a dock in the Abacos — Standard company alongside.

View over the bow of a power catamaran across the turquoise flats of the Sea of Abaco — You navigate by the colour of the water more than by the chart.

Great Guana Cay — 7 nm

Seven miles of cay with a beach down the whole ocean side, a settlement of a few hundred people, and Nippers — a bar on the dune above the surf that is the closest thing the Abacos have to a compulsory stop. You anchor in Fisher's Bay or take a mooring, land the dinghy, and walk over the ridge.

Go for the Sunday pig roast if the week lines up with it; go anyway if it does not. Then walk the beach in either direction for twenty minutes and there is nobody on it.

Power catamaran anchored off a sandbar in clear turquoise water in the Abacos — Anchored off the sand. This is most afternoons.

Treasure Cay — 10 nm

Not a cay at all but a peninsula on Great Abaco, and the site of a beach that turns up on every list of the best in the Caribbean: a three-mile arc of white sand against water that goes from clear to jade to deep blue in about fifty metres. The marina behind it is a full-service basin, which after several nights at anchor is a reasonable thing to want.

It is also where you sit down with the tide tables, because the next leg is the one piece of the route that is not sheltered.

Aerial view of the long curving white beach at Treasure Cay, Abaco, with turquoise shallows — Treasure Cay beach. Three miles of it.

Whale Cay Passage — 5 nm

North of Treasure Cay the Sea of Abaco runs too shallow to pass inside Whale Cay, so everything going north has to go out through the cut, round the outside and back in again. It is a couple of miles in open ocean, and in the wrong conditions — a north-east swell against an outgoing tide — it produces a standing sea that local boats simply refuse to cross. The Bahamians call it a rage.

It is not dangerous if you treat it properly. You ask, you wait, and you go on a settled morning with the tide with you. Most weeks it is a twenty-minute non-event. The point is that it is the one leg you plan the whole week around rather than the one you decide on at breakfast.

Aerial view of a deep blue channel cutting between pale sandbanks in the Abacos — Deep water threading between the banks. Timing matters more than horsepower.

Green Turtle Cay and New Plymouth — 7 nm

Once you are through the passage the character changes. Green Turtle Cay has two protected sounds — White Sound and Black Sound — with marinas inside both, and at the southern end the settlement of New Plymouth: a grid of clapboard houses in pale colours, narrow lanes, a small museum, and a history it does not advertise. During the wrecking years New Plymouth took more salvaged ships than anywhere else in the Abacos.

It is the most complete of the old settlements and the easiest to spend a whole day in. Rent a golf cart or walk; the island is small enough either way.

Aerial view of the pastel clapboard houses and grid of lanes at New Plymouth, Green Turtle Cay — New Plymouth. It took more wrecks than any other settlement in the Abacos.

Early light over a marina on Green Turtle Cay with masts and palms silhouetted — First light in the sound.

Manjack Cay — 4 nm

Also written Nunjack, and after the settlements it is a relief: an uninhabited cay with a long open anchorage on its west side, a beach the length of it, and a walking trail across to the ocean shore. Turtles and rays in the shallows, no facilities, no fee and usually a handful of boats spread out along a mile of water.

This is the stop that people are surprised by, because there is nothing to do on it. Which after a week of small towns is exactly the appeal.

Boats anchored in turquoise water off an uninhabited cay in the northern Abacos — Anchored off Manjack. No shore power, no shop, no fee.

Powell Cay and Spanish Cay — 6 nm

The top of the route. Powell Cay is uninhabited, with a good anchorage in a westerly-protected bight and a trail over to an Atlantic beach covered in whatever the ocean has thrown up that season. Spanish Cay, five miles further on, is private, with a marina and a strip, and is the practical northern limit for a week out of Marsh Harbour — 35 nm from the base, which means turning round.

Go north with the wind behind you early in the week and come back down the chain at your own pace. The last evening is usually at anchor somewhere between the two, with the sun going down over Great Abaco and nothing else on the water.

Aerial view at sunset of yachts anchored off a low cay in the northern Abacos — The northern end, last light.

Orientation

Where the route goes

Orientation only. The line runs down the Sea of Abaco and out through the Whale Cay Passage; it is not a navigational track and it is not a substitute for the chart, which in these waters you read alongside the colour of the water.

Why it is different

Why the Abacos do not sail like the Mediterranean

Flat water, almost always. The barrier cays take the Atlantic swell, so inside the Sea of Abaco you are sailing on protected water with a short chop at worst. The exception is Whale Cay Passage, and you choose your morning for it.

Short legs. Nothing on the route is more than about ten miles from the next thing. A day is a passage before lunch and an anchorage all afternoon, which is a completely different week from a Mediterranean delivery between headlands.

Shallow, and it matters. Large parts of the Sea of Abaco carry two to three metres, the banks shift, and the tide runs to 1.2 metres. You learn to read water colour — white is sand and shallow, green is sand with depth, brown and black are coral and rock — and you time the cuts. A catamaran's draught is not an accident here; it is why most of the fleet is catamarans.

Trade wind, not thermal. The wind is the north-east trade rather than an afternoon sea breeze that dies at six. It is steadier and it blows all day, which makes the sailing better and the anchorages more of a decision — you pick your side of the cay by where the wind is.

The settlements are all loyalist. Hope Town, Man-O-War, New Plymouth and Little Harbour were founded by loyalists who left the American colonies after 1783, and they still look it: white clapboard, picket fences, boat sheds. Between 1845 and 1870 more than three hundred ships went onto these reefs and some 2,700 licensed wreckers made a living off them — though at an average of about twenty pounds a year, it was a living rather than a fortune.

Season

When to go, and the hurricane question

Our season runs from mid-April to mid-August. Air temperature sits around 28 °C and the water between 23 and 28 °C, so you are swimming off the back of the boat every day. February and March are the driest months but the water is cooler and the winter fronts come through harder; by mid-April that has settled.

Hurricane season is 1 June to 30 November, and the active part of it is August to October. Historically a storm passes close to the Bahamas about every second year and makes landfall on the islands roughly every fourth; since records began in 1851 the Abacos have taken one Category 5 and seven Category 4 storms. The most recent was Dorian in September 2019, which sat over Abaco for the best part of two days and flattened Marsh Harbour, Hope Town and Treasure Cay. The cays have been rebuilt, the marinas are open and the charter fleets are back — but it is the reason we finish the season in August rather than pushing into September.

With Tangreto

What an Abacos week looks like with us

You fly into Marsh Harbour via Nassau or a Florida hub and we meet you at the boat. Provisioning is done on the first afternoon in town, because after that the shops are small. Slovak and other EU passports do not currently need a visa for a stay of up to three months, but check before you book — entry rules change.

The week is yours to shape. A typical one runs north with the trade wind behind you early, crosses the Whale Cay Passage on a settled morning, reaches Powell or Spanish Cay by mid-week and comes back down the chain slowly, with the southern leg to Little Harbour added if the weather is kind. Plan on 100 to 120 miles over the week.

We sail with a skipper who has done the route, which in a cruising ground this shallow is worth more than it is in most places. If you want to take the helm you will take the helm; if you would rather sit on the flybridge and be shown where to swim, that works too. Boats are catamarans, sail or power, three or four cabins.

Drone view of a swimmer in the shallows next to a stingray over white sand in the Abacos — The water is clear enough that the drone sees what you see.

Michal Hrivnák sitting in a shaded shelter above a beach in the Abacos — Michal Hrivnák, who put this route together.

Ask about the Abacos

Tell us when you want to go and how many of you there are, and we will come back with a boat and a route.

FAQ

Questions we get asked

When is the best time to sail the Abacos?

Mid-April to mid-August. Air temperature sits around 28 °C and the water between 23 and 28 °C, the winter fronts have stopped and the active part of hurricane season has not started. February and March are drier but cooler.

How far do you sail in a day?

Rarely more than ten nautical miles, and about 100 to 120 over a week. The cays are close together, so a day is a passage in the morning and an anchorage in the afternoon rather than a delivery.

How is it different from sailing in the Mediterranean?

Flat water, because the barrier cays take the Atlantic swell. Very short legs. Steady trade wind instead of an afternoon thermal. And shallow water that you navigate by colour as much as by chart — which is why most of the charter fleet in the Abacos is catamarans.

What is the Whale Cay Passage?

North of Treasure Cay the inside route is too shallow, so you go out into the Atlantic for a couple of miles and back in again. With a north-east swell running against an outgoing tide it produces a steep standing sea that local boats will not cross — a "rage". You pick a settled morning with the tide with you and it is a twenty-minute non-event.

Is the sailing difficult?

The sailing is easy; the depth is the thing you pay attention to. Much of the Sea of Abaco carries two to three metres, the sandbanks move, and the tide runs to about 1.2 m, so you time the shallow cuts and you learn to read water colour. With a skipper who knows the cuts it is a relaxed week.

Do I need a visa for the Bahamas?

Slovak and other EU passport holders do not currently need a visa for a tourist stay of up to three months. You need a passport valid well beyond the trip and an onward ticket. Check the current rules before you book.

How do you get to Marsh Harbour?

Marsh Harbour has direct flights only from the United States and from within the Bahamas, so from Europe you connect through Nassau or a Florida hub — Miami or Fort Lauderdale are the usual ones. From the airport to the marinas is a short taxi ride.

What about hurricanes?

The season runs from 1 June to 30 November and is most active from August to October, which is why we finish in August. Dorian hit Abaco as a Category 5 in September 2019; the settlements, marinas and charter bases have since been rebuilt and are operating.

Are there sharks?

Yes, and they are part of the scenery — nurse sharks under the docks, reef sharks over the coral heads. They are not an issue. The sun is the thing to take seriously: a long-sleeved reef shirt beats reapplying sunscreen all day.