Traveling the Great Loop

Join us as we travel North America's rivers, waterways, and canals; visit U.S. and Canadian cities, historical landmarks, national parks and river towns. We may even take you to the Bahamas.

Lynyard Cay Anchorage & Little Harbour, Great Abaco Island, Bahama Islands

March 13, 2024, Highbourne Cay, Exuma to Lynyard Cay, Abaco: Today’s run: 130 miles

THE ROUTE FROM HIGHBOURNE CAY TO THE ABACOS, requires navigating one pass plus a channel.

Leaving the Bahama Bank, and heading towards Northeast Providence Channel, we pass New Providence Is. (Nassau), and Paradise Is.
Nassau Harbour is indicated by the green arrow, and the ‘unnamed pass’ with a red X. From here, it is 90 miles to Lynyard Cay.
The unnamed pass.

While underway we spot a ship off to port. Below, is one example why AIS, ( Automatic Identification System) is worthwhile installing.

The blue icon is the ship Greenway, a 100m/328 ft cargo vessel. The red icon is our boat. Are we on a collision course?

The AIS indicates Greenways SOG, (Speed Over Ground), is 14mph, our SOG is 19-20mph. Greenways COG, (Course Over Ground), is 105.4°. Currently, we are 4.967 Statute Miles (SM) apart. Do we need to change course to avoid a collision? No; the Closet Position of Approach, (CPA – the nearest we will get to each other), will be 1.035 SM.

At 3 miles; we are located on the far right of the picture, (indicated by the red arrow.)
At 2 miles. We watch that Greenways does not alter course.
At 1.o35 miles, we cross her bow. Can you imagine doing this at night? And without AIS? After dark, reading navigation lights is crucial. But even with that knowledge, before we had installed AIS on our sailboat, I held my breath a lot.
We run alongside Lynyard Cay towards North Bar Channel.
Following the electrotonic chart, we approach the channel. But to confirm we were on the correct heading, we needed to locate a navigation light, a tall slim pole jutting out of the rocks, (indicated by the red arrow.) The pass is marked in the picture by the red dotted line.
You need a good set of binoculars to locate the light before getting too near the channel flanked by shallows and rocky outcrops.
In the channel, waves break over an unmarked sunken barge. Boats need to stay on the north side of the channel.
Lynyard Cay anchorage is indicated by the red arrow. We will explore villages and towns along the coast north of this anchorage. Great Abaco, is 4 mi/8km long.

The 130 mile daytrip was our longest continuous run yet. But sea conditions were good: 2-3 foot swells with long periods in-between, resulting in the passage having less motion than some of our shorter runs.

From Lynyard anchorage, we dinghied 2 miles to Little Harbour on Great Abaco Island. (Indicated by the red arrow below.)

We were pleased to have a reliable outboard motor when we navigated over the swift currents rushing through the narrows, (indicated by a green arrow.)
The sign reads: Welcome to Little Harbour, a different thinking off-the- grid community. We collect our water from the rain and our electric from the sunshine.
A boardwalk leads to the oceanside.
The schoolhouse.

One of the most famous lunch stops in the Bahamas, is Pete’s Place, a sandy floor-beach bar and eatery. (Below).

RANDOLPH JONSTON:

In 1950, Canadian Randolph Johnston, (Ran), Pete’s father, was assistant professor of art at Smith College in Northampton Mass. He left the prestigious position, and everything he had worked for – recognition as a  talented artist.  His reputation as a sculpturist was just beginning; he had already sold a sculpture to the University of Nebraska. But he was disillusioned with the current world; he thought artists were becoming too materialistic. He dreamed of a place where he could practice his love of bronze sculpting free of outside influences.

Johnston was born in Toronto, and educated at several art school venues: Central Technical School in Toronto, the University of Toronto; Ontario College of Art; School of Arts and Crafts in London, England, (Central St Martins College of Art and Design), and the Royal Canadian Academy. (Mother Earth News1976, ask ART)

His personal life had not been easy; his first wife had died, his second wife, who was a ceramist, contracted polio; they had 3 sons and little money. Selling their house in Massachusetts, they used the cash to buy a sailboat, and sailed it to the Bahamas. Langostas, a schooner, was their home while they looked for a place to settle. Their only income came from captaining tourists  on weekends aboard the schooner. 

While sailing on the east side of Great Abaco, they discovered an uninhabited, small, natural harbour shaded with coconut palms. Johnston knew this was the tranquility he was seeking. Here, they would be alone other than a lighthouse keeper at the end of the peninsula. They lived in a bat infested, cliffside cave overlooking the western shore, while erecting a thatched hut. In time, Ran constructed a house out of local stone near the harbour. They scavenged for food: fish, coconuts and bananas. Many times, they went hungry. They named the harbour Little Harbour.

Time passed while Johnston collected what he needed to build a foundry, and then a studio; he sourced materials needed to produce bronze sculptures. He was one of the few artists in the world using the ancient Lost Wax Method, (from model to finished bronze).

Today, the foundry uses recycled tin and copper to produce bronze castings.
The studio.

THE ART

Johnston’s Bahamian Woman, stands in the Nassau marketplace at Prince George Wharf. It reads: In grateful tribute to the Bahamian Woman whose steadfast love and devotion sustained our nation through countless years of adversity.

A sculpture titled St Peter: Fisher of Men, sits in the Vatican Museum in Rome. 

Randolph Johnston died in 1992; his son Peter (Pete), an artist in his own right, continues to run the business creating detailed animal and human figures using the same 5000-year-old technique.

The original Pete’s restaurant (1968), had been constructed from the pilot house of the family sailboat – Langosta. There was no road connecting Little Harbour with the outside world until sometime in the ’90s, at which time Hurricane Floyd, (1999), destroyed nearly all their possessions, the foundry, studio and Pete’s Place. ( Nothing had been insured.)

Today, a community of approximately 50 artists and other professionals live there.

To learn more about Little Harbour and the 12-step sculpting technique using the Lost Wax technique, click here: https://www.abacoescape.com/Caves/LittleHarbour.html

To watch a 3-minute video tour of the foundry, (you will get a glimpse of Little Harbour), click here: https://www.bahamas.com/experiences/johnston-art-foundry-abacos

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