April 6, 2010.

We spent a few days in Governors Harbor, Eleuthera. We really like Governors Harbor. There’s a really nice vibe to the town plus its got a bakery. We did some food shopping, jugged a little gasoline, had a beer at the local pub and then went on a photographic walkabout.

There’s one lane here in town that we really enjoy. Each yard and home is as close to idyllic as you can find here. Colorfully painted homes surrounded by lush vegetation are the norm.


After a few days enjoying Governors harbor it was time to head north towards the Current Cut. It’s 30 miles
away and because we have to ride an ebbing tide through the cut we’ve decided to move up to an anchorage near the Glass Window.

The Glass Window was a natural rock bridge that collapsed in the thirties effectively dividing Eleuthera into 2 separate islands. It wasn’t until the sixties that they got around to building a modern concrete bridge. That’s when it got interesting. In the nineties a rogue wave at least 5 stories tall came blasting through the narrow gap and lifted the entire bridge span up and redeposited it about 7 feet to the west. So in typical Bahamas fashion….they left it. They adjusted the flow of traffic to where the bridge now lies. In the last 2 years they’ve gotten around to adding some more support under the span.

After a night at the Glass Window we pulled the hooks in the predawn darkness for the 12 mile sail to the Current Cut. We arrived at about 0830 and motorsailed through the cut at 11 knots. Our friends on Savage Sun were making their first trip through the cut so it was only fitting that a memorable milestone should turn into a sphincter slamming event.

To traverse the cut when headed north you make a 90 degree turn to starboard and hug a series of small ironshore cays. Then as you reach the main channel you make a 110 degree turn to port. At this point your boat will pick up a few knots as you’re swept through the cut. As Bob and Bev were paralleling the ironshore their engine overheated. They had to shut down the engine which left them close hauled on starboard tack with the worst possible shoreline 50 feet off their port side. We had all been sailing but opted to start the engines for safety’s sake as the wind would be pretty close to the nose in the worst part of the trip. Thank God they had all sail up on their Valiant 42 and were able to claw along the shoreline and make the downwind turn into the cut. The channel is so narrow that there is no room to tack away, if they couldn’t make that point of sail they were screwed. It all worked out for them although I’m sure Bob’s turds will resemble linguine for a couple of weeks. To their credit though they kept on snapping pictures the whole way and captured one of us motorsailing with just the main up through the cut.

Once through the cut it was a run right into the anchorage in Royal Island. Savage Son sailed right through the narrow opening, rounded up and dropped the hook under sail like they’d done it a thousand times. Since it had only been a 20 mile day we diagnosed and fixed Bob’s overheating problem and then headed in to shore to explore the abandoned ruins.
It had been a palatial estate overlooking the harbor but has been in ruins for over 50 years. There are still recognizable features like a boat house,
a main house with at least 8 bedrooms, a separate building for cooking, an outside patio bar and a flower garden.