Harbour Island is often called “Briland” by the locals (in the lilting Bahamian accent, “Harbour Island” is pronounced more like “Ar-br island, where the “br” is slurred into the “island”, hence “Briland”). It’s a short hop from Spanish Wells but in order to get here, you have to navigate the Devil’s Backbone, an infamously tricky passage through shallow reef, requiring visual navigation with little room for error. Rather than press our luck, we hired a local pilot to bring us through. He brought a delicious, home-made carrot cake as a thank-you for hiring him, and we learned a lot about the area on our three hour passage. At $120, the local knowledge alone was worth it, not to mention not needing to stress out over whether our visual piloting was correct (and um, that carrot cake!).
We anchored between Valentines and Romora Bay marinas and headed in to explore town and visit the famous pink sand beach. Once again, I had no idea what to expect, but somehow Harbour Island wasn’t what I expected. Many of the vacation homes would fit right in on Nantucket or the Vineyard, lending the island a familiar vibe. While it’s a favorite spot of the rich and famous, it’s not pretentious, although I felt less of a connection to the people here. I got the sense that tourists generally make less of an effort to interact.
The pink sand beach is stunning, and I can see why it’s so hyped up. The water is crystal clear turquoise and bath water warm. The pink creates beautiful patterns in the sand, but it’s more subtle than I expected and is more visible around sunrise and sunset when the sun is lower in the sky.
Chris’s parents and our oldest niece came to visit, and the boat shrank significantly with four adults and a pre-teen aboard, but we had a nice few lazy days with them in town. It was nice to spend time with my niece, and we had fun swimming and playing frisbee on the beach. I took a morning to entertain them while Chris went diving – he hadn’t gotten to dive in a long time, so I insisted he schedule time to go – and Hannah and I got into a quite competitive game of ring toss. She was way better than me! We took them shopping and out to dinner, and otherwise we kept it pretty low-key. It was really nice that they were able to come visit, and I hope Hannah enjoyed her first time traveling outside the US.
We heard there was good snorkeling off Cistern Rock in Bottom Harbour, so after we saw them off, we loaded our gear into Squall to see for ourselves. I was bummed to find that the GoPro battery was dead, especially after a couple sea turtles swam past as we anchored up on the side of the island facing shore. There was a little current at the edges of the island, but it was a pretty easy snorkel, and we took our time. There were so many species of fish, and because it was shallow, it was the first time I really saw how vibrant many of them were. As we completed our circuit, a few of the local excursion boats showed up. We waited until most of them left and did a second circuit, swimming the other way, and saw species we’d missed the first time around. When you take it slow, it’s amazing how much more life you see. Among our favorites were the sea turtle, puffer fish and scrawled filefish, plus some queen angelfish, various parrotfish, and lots of sergeant majors.
After a week of being anchored off Harbour Island, we made a quick hop up to Man Island, a private island about a half hour north. We visited the beach on the southwest side of the island and walked around to the ocean side. We couldn’t find the main trail, so we scrambled over the ironshore around the point until we found a little footpath to the ocean. Along the ocean beach, we found some juvenile sergeant majors and gobys in the tidal pools, and watched the waves crash along the crevices in the shore.
We heard there was good snorkeling off the island but didn’t have much luck finding a spot. Still, we hopped in the water at a couple small patches of reef and saw some interesting corals and fish. And on our hunt for snorkel spots, we discovered a little cave carved out of the layered limestone cliff on the shoreline.
After a year and a half of cruising, we finally got to have our beach bonfire and s’mores at sunset. The bugs were out in force, and I was glad I remembered bug spray. It was just windy enough to make starting the fire difficult, but we really only needed it to catch just long enough to toast a couple marshmallows. It was a silly little thing, but I was so excited to do it.
Before returning to the land of responsible working people, we took an early morning walk on the beach at the north end of the island, walking across sandbars and tidal flats in front of the casuarina-lined shore. The reddish marl created large patches of pink sand, and at the tip of the island we found the ruins of a structure long lost to wind and water.
It was nice to be away from the power boat wake for a couple days, but with heavy south winds in the forecast, we headed back to Harbour Island to tuck in and find some protection. The Valentines anchorage was a little rolly but much better than what we would have seen over at Man.
For our mid-week date night, we lucked into a table at Da Vine, a sushi and wine bar. Everything we ordered was amazing – we hadn’t had really good sushi since Annapolis on the way north last year, so it was a nice treat.
We’ve been monitoring the weather and trying to decide when to make the hop up to The Abacos. We’ll get the pilot to bring us back through the Devil’s Backbone and decide what to do from there.
Now that we’ve visited other parts of The Bahamas, we’re curious to see how The Abacos compare and what we think of it now. I do wish we’d gotten better weather to visit more of Eleuthera, but with family and personal commitments, that wasn’t an option this year. But that just means we’ll have new territory to explore on our next visit.
