The BEST SAILING destination in the WORLD- - Sailing Florence

The azure waters of the Bahamas provide a breathtaking spectacle for many events. Sailing through the shallow waters, we stop off to visit the locals on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean, before experiencing a huge sailing regatta, Bahamas style. We are Amy and Matt. We've spent the last six and a half years sailing our 37-foot sailboat Florence around the world. In that time, we have crossed four oceans and over 46,000 miles have passed under our keel. Now we have made it back to the Caribbean, we will explore these famous islands before we re-cross the North Atlantic Ocean to return to where we began this voyage in England. Today we're sailing across from Salt Pond on Long Island to Georgetown in the Exumas and the reason that we're going there, the main reason that we're going there, is there's an event coming up which we're pretty excited to go and see. Whilst we were in Long Island, we heard about a regatta that's happening where they're going to be racing the traditional bohemian classes of boats. They've got the A class, the B class and the C class and whilst we were on Long Island, when we were driving down to see that blue hole, we saw one of the A class, the bigger boats, being prepared on the side of the road. Just seeing these traditional boats being raced in a regatta here is going to be an awesome experience. The guys preparing the boat over on Long Island were really, really friendly. They actually built the boat themselves, they chopped down a tree on Long Island and built the boat back in 2016, which is, they said it seemed like a long time ago, but that's actually when we set off cruising, so six and a half years ago and they had to rush to finish the boat to get it finished ready for the regatta that year and they've been racing it ever since and apparently they do quite well and they were super, super chilled out and friendly guys. It's just everybody here we've met so far has been super friendly, it's an awesome place. We are sailing to Georgetown but we're going to try and see if we can stop at what looks like a beautiful island called White Quay overnight on the way. It's a spectacular day for sailing today. I can really see why people rave about sailing in the Bahamas. We've been sailing in three or maximum four meters of water, we've got 10 knots of wind and we are just gliding along and can see the bottom below Florence. Absolutely gorgeous. The main thing that is making the sailing so beautiful today is the fact that we are sheltered from the open ocean swell by Long Island so this whole area is just flat calm. Florence is barely rolling, absolutely gorgeous. I think if you don't love sailing in the Bahamas then you're probably not going to love sailing at all. Oh you can see a sand spit at the end of the island. This is White Quay where we are planning to stop for the night. It's very shallow so before we approach too close we're going to slow down by dropping the spinnaker. Okay ready to snap. On Florence we have a sock with the spinnaker which makes handling this, the biggest sail on board, much easier. We made a video sharing our tips and tricks for easy spinnaker handling and we'll put a link in the description the end that says warning don't feed the iguanas and they're endangered Bahamian iguanas here and we thought well let's see if we can find one and then we looked at the island and there's like five iguanas looking back at us. Known as the Sandy Quay rock iguana this species of iguana only lives on this quay and is therefore highly endangered. Unfortunately they've suffered from poaching by exotic pet dealers and a decimation of their population by predators getting onto the island in the recent past. The adults can grow up to 11 inches long and they mainly eat leaves, flowers and fruits although they occasionally supplement this with a few insects. I am so glad we stopped here, what a spectacular island and I can't believe that we are just around the corner from Georgetown where at the height of the cruising season there's potentially up to 500 boats. We're just around the corner and we're the only boat anchored here, it's amazing. In fact before our footprints messed up the beach there were only the footprints of an iguana and a couple of birds. We've been lucky enough to see a lot of beautiful beaches on our trip around the world but I am still really glad that we came to the Bahamas, it's such a special place. This island was used in the set for two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films including the scene where they dig up the treasure chest. Just enjoying the view was treasure enough for us. Probably one of the reasons there's no one else here is that this is a very open anchorage, there isn't a lot of protection. It's not actually mentioned as an anchorage in the cruising guide although it is mentioned as an anchorage on the charts but with the conditions we've got overnight we should be okay, most of the wind should be coming over the island although we have got a few raining clouds around, some sort of thundery clouds that could bring a bit of breeze so hopefully we'll have a calm night here. But it was great to stop here because it's exactly halfway from where we were in Salt Pond on Long Island to Georgetown, 70 miles to here and the wind was dying as we came in here so we managed to sail all the way here and there's forecast to be breeze again tomorrow morning so we can sail on and this breeze we've got now hopefully should die off a bit through the night and give us a calm night. It's been an absolutely amazing day today, one of the best days we've had in a long time, just some fantastic sailing to enjoy and an amazing crystal clear water anchorage, just beautiful islands that we're by. You can really see why people choose to come to the quite a lot of extra miles from the BVI or from the Eastern Caribbean and it's going to give us a more difficult angle to get up to Bermuda when we do eventually leave here but just after a day like today we're so glad that we did choose to come here because it's just a fantastic place to come sailing. The next morning the promised wind appeared and we sailed on 17 miles through the shallows and reefs to Georgetown, the main hub for sailing in the Exumas. So we've arrived here in Georgetown in time for the family regatta with all the traditional boats and it is an absolute hive of activity here. There are boats everywhere, I didn't think there'd be this many, there's eight of the big A-class boats that are racing, I'm not sure how many B-class but the C-class there are 42 of them here and there's five people on each of those C-class boats so there are literally hundreds of people here, loads of bars, loads of music setting up ready for the entertainment in the evenings and all the boats arriving, loads of them are already here in the water, loads are still arriving on ferry, some have been towed here, they're all being lifted in, having their masks stepped, it's kind of organized chaos over there in the boat park and racing starts tomorrow. It's going to be awesome to see all these boats out racing and I'm really looking forward to it. It turns out that this regatta is a huge deal in the Bahamas, the boats proudly display the names of their home islands and they've traveled from all across the Bahamas to compete. So this is the first day of the regatta and we come out with Florence to take a look and they're about to start a C-class race which is the biggest fleet in the regatta, five people on each boat, two prize which are planks which they hang out on the side of, but the start's quite interesting, it's different to how we would normally start a dinghy race or a yacht race, they actually have a stationary start, they all anchor in a line between two boys on the start line and then they fire a gun or start them somehow, we don't know yet, and they have to pull their anchor up, hoist a sail and start. So they're all anchored really close together, I think it's going to be absolute chaos on the start, but we've spoken to them and the start is absolutely key and that's the same in any dinghy race that we've competed in, but we don't normally have to pull an anchor up and then pull the sails up. Our microphone won't be able to pick it up but there is a lot of shouting going on in the background. As the boats increase in size the number of crew also increases, from the C-class with five crew, the B-class have nine on board and the biggest, the A-class, can sail with up to 15 people, which makes for not much space out on the prize. These are traditional boats, they're full keel boats, they're heavy, they're the fishing boats that would have gone out to fish back in the day and now they're used for racing, but because of that long keel they take quite a long time to tack so it's got to be quite a big wind shift to make it worth tacking and sometimes if you're coming into the windward mark and you have to do two extra tacks it can lose you a huge amount, so there is a lot of skill to plotting your way up the course on one of these boats. We're washing around because of the wash from all the spectator fleets just bouncing Florence around because all the spectator boats go through the anchorage, but I've absolutely loved this week seeing the enthusiasm from the younger generation coming up through and the fact that racing these traditional boats is a growing sport in this place, it's not a dying sport. I mean when we were leaving the UK we're keen dinghy racers but the number of young people coming into dinghy racing was really declining, whereas here we've been talking to them and it's really growing, there's a huge enthusiasm from the younger generations to get out and try and get more of these boats. They're building more of these traditional boats, there's rules, they have to be built in the Bahamas using materials from the Bahamas and they have to be traditional wooden boats and they're limited on where they can get all the components from, which is great because it keeps it all traditional, but there's a huge enthusiasm so the fleets are growing with younger people which is fantastic to see and really healthy for sailing in the Bahamas. So sailing doesn't normally do very well as a spectator sport but I am amazed at how big the spectator fleet is in this regatta, not just on the water but also ashore. Every generation from all of the islands has come to take part in this and and to get involved in all of the activities, it's absolutely brilliant. I feel incredibly lucky that our timing coming into Georgetown has worked out that we've been able to see this regatta and the tradition of sailing within the Bahamas, it's been perfect. Next time we leave the balmy Caribbean islands behind and head out into the North Atlantic Ocean as we point Florence's bow east for the first time in seven years. But this ocean crossing does not get off to a good start. I think it hit us both really hard just how much we struggled. I haven't seen Matt that badly seasick in probably about five years. If you enjoy our videos please subscribe to the channel to make sure you don't miss an episode and that's absolutely free. We are usually a couple of months ahead of the videos in real time and that means that right now we should be part way through our North Atlantic crossing. Sailing Florence offshore from the Caribbean to England via a couple of islands on the way. If you'd like to see where we are in real time then please join the crew over on Patreon to see the tracker map where we post a daily update. As always we want to say a massive thank you to everyone who supports the making of these videos and especially our star patrons.