Yacht charter Nassau

Why the fleet embarks here

A great many of the yachts you will be offered for a Bahamian week live in Florida. They embark guests in Nassau because United States coastwise law does not permit a foreign-flagged vessel to carry paying passengers between American points, and almost the entire large charter fleet is foreign-flagged.

The Bahamas has no such restriction. A yacht may charter here on her own flag, subject to a Bahamian charter permit and the associated fees, which is why Nassau functions as the embarkation port for a cruising ground whose boats are mostly based fifty miles away.

For you this is administrative rather than practical. Nassau has good international connections, the transfer to the marinas is twenty minutes, and starting here saves the Gulf Stream crossing that would otherwise eat a day of your week at each end. The people who mind are generally the ones who were not told in advance.

Reading the water

This is the skill that separates a good Bahamian captain from a merely competent one, and it is worth understanding because it explains why the week runs the way it does.

Much of the Bahama Banks carries two to four metres at low water, over sand, with isolated coral heads that rise sharply and are not always charted. The charts are indicative rather than authoritative. Navigation is therefore substantially visual: the crew read depth by colour, from deep blue through green to the pale sand that means you are about to stop.

That has three consequences for your week. Passages happen with the sun high and behind you, because you cannot read water into the sun or at dusk — so departures are mid-morning and arrivals are mid-afternoon. Overnight passages inside the banks essentially do not happen. And a rainy, overcast day is a day the yacht may sensibly stay where she is.

What draft actually excludes

Draft	What opens up
Under 1.5 m	Effectively everything, including the shallow cuts and inner banks
1.5 – 2.2 m	All the well-known Exuma stops; some inner routes closed
2.2 – 2.8 m	Main channels and deeper anchorages; a real narrowing
Over 2.8 m	Outside routes and deep harbours only; a different holiday

This is the reason we put catamarans in front of clients here more often than anywhere else on earth, and it is a matter of access rather than taste. A twenty-three metre catamaran drawing 1.4 metres reaches anchorages a forty-metre motor yacht simply cannot enter.

The Exuma Land and Sea Park

The centrepiece of the cruising ground and the part that requires you to behave differently. It is a protected area covering a substantial stretch of the northern Exuma cays, and it operates as a no-take zone: no fishing, no shelling, no removing anything at all, alive or dead.

Anchoring is restricted in favour of park moorings, which are limited in number and taken on a first-come basis. Warderick Wells, the park headquarters, has a mooring field in a curving sand channel that is among the most beautiful anchorages in the Caribbean and is frequently full by early afternoon in season.

The practical effect is the same as the Balearic seagrass rules: it rewards crews who know the ground and plan a day ahead, and it punishes those who decide over breakfast. A good operator will have the park days identified before you board.

Fronts, not hurricanes

Everyone asks about hurricanes and almost nobody asks about the thing that will actually affect their week.

The charter season runs December to April, entirely outside the Atlantic hurricane season. What does happen in those months is that cold fronts push down off the North American continent every week or so, swing the wind through the west into the north, and blow hard for a day or two before settling back into the trades.

This matters because most Exuma anchorages are protected from the prevailing east and are open to the west. When a front comes through, the comfortable bay you are in becomes a lee shore and the fleet moves. Experienced crews watch the forecast four days out and position accordingly, which occasionally means a longer run than planned on a Tuesday so that Wednesday is spent somewhere sheltered.

January and February see the most frontal activity. March is, on the whole, the best month of the season: the fronts are weakening, the water has warmed, and the Christmas pricing is well behind you.

The week, south down the chain

1. Nassau to Highbourne Cay. Thirty-five miles across the bank. The first taste of the water colour that everyone photographs.
2. Normans and Shroud. Sheltered anchorages, a well-known blue hole, and the first day that feels genuinely remote.
3. Warderick Wells. Park headquarters and the mooring field. Walk to Boo Boo Hill; the view is the reason people come back.
4. Compass Cay and Pipe Creek. Shallow, intricate, and the part of the chain that rewards a shoal-draft boat most obviously.
5. Staniel Cay. Thunderball Grotto, the swimming pigs at Big Major, and the only reliable reprovisioning south of Highbourne.
6. Black Point or Great Guana. Settlements rather than resorts, and the best conch on the chain.
7. Back north, or a one-way finishing at Great Exuma with a flight from George Town.

Seven nights covers this comfortably at a gentle pace. Ten is better and allows the crossing to Eleuthera or the Abacos. Anything less than five is not worth the flights.

What it costs

Quoted in US dollars, and frequently all-inclusive rather than on the plus-expenses basis normal in Europe. Read which model applies before comparing two quotes.

Bahamian cruising and charter permits and the associated fees apply and should be a stated line. There is no VAT in the European sense, though a charter operating in Bahamian waters attracts local tax that the operator should quote explicitly. Crew gratuity here runs at fifteen to twenty per cent, higher than the Mediterranean norm.

Provisioning is the line that surprises people. Almost everything is imported, and food and drink aboard cost noticeably more than the equivalent week in Greece or Croatia. The crew will provision in Nassau or Florida before you board, which mitigates it, but it does not eliminate it.

Questions