For those of you who want to experience cruising at its best, if you live in Europe or the East Coast of the US, in your back yards is some of the very best cruising on this planet. We speak of the Exhumas group in the southern Bahama Islands.

Georgetown is cruising central, one of those locations where cruisers congregate and use as a base for regional exploration. We happened to be present for the annual Bahamian regatta.

The big attraction for us has been the wildlife. Within 100 nautical miles of Georgetown are a series of Bahamian national parks with stunning, typically uncrowded anchorages, and wonderful critter viewing.

The next three photos are of the Conception Cay welcoming committee. They came out to say hello to us when we were riding in the dinghy.

We’ve photographed dolphin all over the world, but this is the first time they have come to play in the dinghy bow wave.

It is late spring, and the weather has been typically mild, with occasional periods of thunderstorms and lightning displays livening up the scenery. The recent evenings tend toward warm and humid so we have been running the air conditioning while we are sleeping, powering through the evening on the battery bank.

Travis Gomez, who we met last summer in Maine, is taking a break from his Fox Island Charter business to help us out aboard Cochise.  He shares our love of photography.

Travis has excellent hand eye coordination and a good sense for composition. It is a good thing we are not into photographic competition!

Travis is also skilled drone operator.

The solar array aboard FPB 78-1 Cochise has been doing its job creating electric power to run our systems. Output has varied between 23 and 31 kWh.On most days this is sufficient to power all of our systems, including battery operated air conditioning during sleeping hours as previously mentioned. We have been experimenting with various combinations of natural air flow, fans, and our air conditioning.  We shall report in detail in the near future.

We have been pleasantly surprised by the variety of bird life (an osprey above).

We had to look up this red egret who overflew us when we were exploring the local mangroves at dusk. It is the first we have ever seen.

The combination of light colored, clear water, and wildlife is hard to beat.

Even the crabs are lovely to contemplate.

There is one small negative, mosquitoes, and similar bugs. The early evening and morning hours are definitely to be avoided when viewing the mangroves unless covered with insect repellent and are wearing protective clothing. However, the insects have one redeeming characteristic; they provide incentive for night hawks to demonstrate their aerobatic flying skills.

We will leave you with a few more of our favorite photos of this short cruise through the Bahamas.

Thanks to Pete Goss who took this sunset photo of Cochise  under a full moon, with his cell phone.