The morning of February 18, 2013 dawned with the previous day's frontal boundary well southeast of us and the signal to depart our cold front refuge in French Bay, San Salvador. With forecast winds being NE at 20-25 kts, we prepared to depart for West Bay, Conception Island, a passage of approximately 38nm due west. Seas were forecast to be quite confused due to the prior frontal passage, but since we'd be sailing almost directly downwind, this trip would be easy, if not a little rolly. After waiting just long enough for good light to pick our way out through the coral heads of French Bay, we departed at 0900 planning to sail downwind on genoa alone. Dave's mantra for downwind sailing is "sailboats prefer to be pulled, not pushed," so we usually don't use the mainsail for deep downwind directions.

Conception Island is a small, uninhabited island at the “mouth” of Exuma Sound, only about 15nm NE from Cape Santa Maria, Long Island and 37nm from Georgetown, Great Exuma. See Google Earth N23*50' + W075*07'. It is a Bahamas National Park and under the protection of The Bahamas National Trust. We're not exactly sure what this “protection” means as our cruising guides provide conflicting information. Normally reliable Pavlidis states the land is a “no take” and “no trash” zone, but fishing for take is not prohibited. Other sources state both the land and water are “no take” zones like the Exumas Land and Sea Park. For us this conflicting information didn't matter as this island is visited so often by cruisers from Georgetown and Long Island that the beaches are already picked over, despite the “no take” rule, and our fishing luck has been so poor lately that we'd likely not be any threat to the fish....

After spending all of our time this winter in the remote Out Islands where few cruisers venture, we knew we'd have to come back to reality at Conception Island – a short and easy fair weather destination from the very popular cruising centers in Georgetown, Great Exuma and Salt Pond, Long Island. “Seclusion” was out of the picture at this popular spot. But as we were arriving from San Salvador on strong, post-frontal east winds, it was unlikely any boats would be there from Georgetown and Long Island so soon after the front. It would be upwind for them. So as it turned out we would have the whole place to ourselves for a couple of days until the weather improved for the inevitable visitors from the west.

In route to Conception we trolled four lines hoping to change our recent poor fishing luck. Dave spent much of the passage clearing weeds from the baits, however. Despite these efforts we were skunked again, almost. While approaching the north tip of the Southampton reef projecting to the north from Conception, but still in water over 1000 feet, one reel sang out and we had a fish. We got a glimpse of a long, slender, silvery object and initially hoped it was a wahoo. But we soon realized it was a 'cuda! A thousand foot cuda! That's a first for us. It was soon back in the water as we honored the “no take” rule whether we had to or not...


We arrived at West Bay, Conception Island at 1500 on February 18^th and, as hoped, were the only boat there. We picked what we thought was the very best anchoring spot near the beach in the north east corner of the bay. It was easily apparent why this is such a popular spot – not only is it easy to get to from the Exumas and Long Island, like most other small islands in the Bahamas, it's drop-dead gorgeous. The crescent beach has the finest sugar sand that can be found, and the off-lying reefs as seen from shore appear pristine and inviting for diving and snorkeling. See Google Earth N23*51'13.6” + W075*07'13.1” for our anchored position.

We enjoyed our solitude through the next day, although the weather wasn't the best for snorkeling or going ashore. It was still quite windy and cloudy and overnight there was significant rainfall. Because the wind direction was forecast to veer to the south east, we decided to reset our anchor position a bit to avoid swinging too close to a rocky section of the nearby shore. Also we wanted to ensure that, when the expected crowd showed up as the weather improved, no one would have room to anchor upwind of us between our position and the beach. Trying to raise the anchor, though, it was stuck on a rock and our memory of breaking our claw anchor at Acklins immediately came back to caution us about proceeding before we knew exactly what our anchor's problem was. As it was getting late in the day we decided to let our chain back out, slightly shorter, and dive on the anchor the next day in better light to see how bad our situation was.


By mid afternoon the next day, the weather had improved for Dave to dive on the anchor. It was wedged under a rock with the chain wrapped around it. See the picture. With Donna powering the boat forward enough to relieve the tension on the chain, Dave was able to unwind the chain by hand. It was only about eight feet deep (another reason to favor anchoring in shallow water). After Dave returned to the boat we then maneuvered Pas de Deux to the opposite side of the rock and were thus able to pull the anchor from the opposite direction by backing the boat towards the beach, pulling it free from the rock. Whew! Upon fully retrieving the anchor we determined that it was undamaged and we re-set in clear sand only about 200 feet away.


In the meantime, a mega yacht had arrived, complete with jet skis, and we knew our Conception solitude was over. Before the end of the day two cruising sailboats and one cruising trawler arrived, as well as a large, stealthy motor yacht that we soon dubbed “James Bond”.
We would end up spending seven nights at Conception. The weather improved and we watched many boats come and go. At the highest total we counted 19 boats in the anchorage. Fortunately there is room for many more that number and our positioning proved to work out – no boats ventured into the shallows upwind of us. We met the crews of several cruising sailboats ashore and on one day an impromptu beach party was called to watch the sunset. We attended with the crews from four other boats. It was an enjoyable time.

As the guidebooks would have it, Conception is known for its beauty, snorkeling and diving and we were eager to check out the nearby shallow reefs. There are limited time frames for a visit to this island and always best in very mild conditions if you wish to take advantage of the underwater attractions.   Since we would have multiple mild days ahead of us, this proved our opportunity to visit the West Bay anchorage. While there is an anchorage on the eastern side of the island with its own host of things to see, the forecast winds would not allow us to visit there this time around.

We saved the more exposed outer reef areas for the mildest forecast days when wind could be expected to drop below 10 kts. In the meantime, we could swim to a nearby patch reef that, although it proved to be largely limestone rock ledges with little coral, interspersed with large sand patches, and with few fish to be found, it was still possible to stumble on something exciting. In swimming over one of the sand patches surrounded by rock, Dave spotted a large ray entirely nestled under the sand with only its two large eyes and a bit of the length of its tail visible. If you watched closely you could witness it breathing by observing a small amount of sand at its head puff up and down.

When the wind was stronger we were still able to dinghy to patch reefs inside the very large anchorage area where the island moderated the force of wind-driven chop and we could still comfortably snorkel. We scouted a number of reefs, stopping at those we determined would have the best color and good structure. There was a lot of elkhorn coral to be seen, although not always in the best condition we have seen elsewhere. At one stop, with Dave already in the water, Donna jumped in to immediately see a large lemon shark (minimum 6 ft length) swimming away. As this was the middle of the day, perhaps the arrival of the dinghy or the sound of Dave or Donna entering the water motivated it to move from the spot where it may have been resting earlier, as this otherwise did not seem the time of day for this creature to be out seeking food. The clarity of the water was a huge disappointment, as we had little visibility beyond perhaps 30 feet, so by the time Donna could alert Dave for a look, the shark was too far distant to be visible. We could have visited some other patches in the direction the shark traveled, but chose not too because of the poor visibility.

On the mildest day we took the dinghy out to a more distant dive buoy to determine whether there was a reason to tie there for nearby snorkeling at the Southampton reef that extends from the northern tip of the island. We did not find anything near enough to that buoy and the wind chop was terrible. Normally we would not even attempt to snorkel a fully exposed reef unless the wind is below 6 kts. Donna wanted to do a “drive by” to see what might be in the area of the dive buoy, as well as the depths. She decided it really served divers best who might swim to the shoreline of a nearby cay or along the outside length of the reef itself. As snorkelers, we would have better access to the reef from its “interior”, where on this day we would also be much better protected from wind chop.

Unfortunately Dave had picked up an ear infection in the past couple of days, so he would sit this day out in the dinghy while he watched Donna snorkel. We moved to the interior of the reef where there are countless patch reefs. Again we scouted for those that we thought could be most interesting. Donna snorkeled several and found most to be quite similarly dramatic in formation in significant depths of water, but were largely mounds of rock with very large elkhorn that were not entirely healthy. There was very little other coral growth, but randomly some nice soft corals could be found.    There were very few fish to be seen compared to other reef areas we have visited. On a future visit with calmer seas, we might be able to find more areas of interest on either this side or the other side of the island.


We went ashore for a beach walk to the opposite side of this northern tip of the island where you could then take a rope assist to stand on some tall rocks overlooking the expansive Southampton reef area and western shore. There's a very nice shallow “baby pool” area on this side very protected along the beach by enormous rock formations that would be ideal for someone with small children to swim.

The downside of being in such a popular location was best illustrated by the crew and passengers of charter mega-yacht Kogo. Appropriate for its size, it anchored well out into the anchorage. But there the courtesy ended. It's four jet skis raced through the anchorage at high speeds and the yacht's tender pulled water skiers through and around the anchored smaller boats, including us. At one point the tender circled us pulling a skier – its wake hitting us simultaneously from three directions. Very low class and very rude. 

Continuing our general direction towards the Abacos, our next move was to be to Rock Sound, Eleuthera, about 95nm to the northwest. This location, which we had visited earlier in the season, was selected in order to take refuge from a strong cold front due to arrive around March 1^st. So our departure timing and route from Conception was driven by weather forecasts preceding the front and we started analyzing a week in advance. The variables aligned as best they could by February 25^th, and we departed Conception for a one-stop trip back to Eleuthera.

See several additional photos below!

Notes to cruisers: The West Bay anchorage at Conception has plenty of good sand, but is interspersed by numerous rocks and coral heads. Some of the rocks appear as grass patches and some, like the one we got caught on, are isolated. Take more care than we did on where we dropped the first time. If the weather had been more favorable when we arrived, our custom is to dive on the anchor which would have exposed our problem immediately.