We were curious to finally visit Treasure Cay after having spent so much time in the Abacos and never having gotten there. We’d heard mixed reviews post-Dorian and were looking forward to forming our own opinion. We cautiously made our way in on a rising tide. The channel is narrow with obvious shoaling – charts are generally ok for the channel (although there’s variance across our CMAP, Navionics and Aqua Maps charts), but this is a spot where I wouldn’t want to transit without good visual nav conditions. A Sécurité call before entering/exiting is advisable.
Treasure is a bit of a mixed bag for us. It’s beautiful, the people we’ve met have been incredibly friendly and welcoming, and the harbor is really well protected. We got mixed drinks to go from the liquor store (those ladies make a strong drink!) and walked the stunning beach with powder-soft white sand and crystal blue water. We enjoyed dinner at the Bahama Beach Club (make reservations!), bought lobsters from a local fisherman, and got breakfast at Cafe La Florence, where the cinnamon rolls absolutely live up to the hype.
On the other hand, Dorian’s impact is still quite obvious. The marina was completely destroyed, there is no actual dinghy dock (the kind gentlemen at the boat rental allow cruisers to tie up where there’s space, but access is definitely challenging), some moorings remain but are not currently maintained, and you have to be extremely careful where you anchor since there are concrete mooring blocks with no ball attached throughout the harbor along with other debris left from Dorian. When we went to double check our anchor set when we first arrived, I spotted one of the old blocks directly in our swing radius and with our deep draft, that could have been really ugly. If you come in, check an older Google Earth image for an idea of where the old moorings are, and survey your swing radius for other debris. All that said, I’m glad we got to explore this area. And I’m certainly not discouraging others from visiting, but for us, it’s a challenging spot that we wouldn’t have had the skill/knowledge to safely handle our past two seasons.
While we were here, the entire Bahamas chain experienced some nasty storms that had me really nervous. The charts noted poor holding and we were anchored closer to one of the sea walls than we’d like, but there was nowhere else we could safely anchor without running the risk of snagging our anchor or hitting the keel on debris. If we were to drag, re-anchoring would have been tough.
Ahead of the storms, we dinghied over to introduce ourselves to our neighbors and make sure we’d all be on the same VHF channel. Big Enough, the catamaran in front of us, was really nice and they invited us aboard for drinks and dinner. We felt awful having arrived empty-handed, but they insisted and we had a really fun evening.
The wind built throughout the day Friday, so I spent most of the day working on deck to keep an eye on our position. It’s amazing how easily your mind convinces you you’re dragging – it’s why we set an anchor alarm and stand watch when it’s truly dicey – I don’t trust either alone. Overnight the wind was mostly in the low 20s and we had off and on rain but only heard a few rumbles of thunder. One cell passed close enough that we saw gusts up to 34, but that was the worst of it and since we were so well protected, we had hardly any wave action. In these conditions, we normally would have set an anchor alarm and gotten some sleep, but we were only a few boat lengths from the wall so we felt an anchor watch was necessary.
The storm continued throughout the day Saturday and we actively monitored forecasts, radar and WeatherBug’s spark lightning feature (which turned out to be the most useful of the three). During a break in the rain, the crew of the fuel tanker that arrived on Friday came over to let us know we’d have to move as they intended to get under way around 6pm and we were in the turning basin.
Fortunately the storms cleared out around 4:30pm. After a quick check of the weather and radar, we decided to spend the night at the anchorage outside of Treasure rather than try to stay out of the tanker’s way and then find a new spot to anchor. We had a gorgeous sunset, and the wind continued to fade off through the evening. Both of us were exhausted, and I ended up sleeping in until almost 8:30, which I never do.
