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.

Green Turtle Cay: Green Turtle Club Resort and Marina, (including New Plymouth), Great Abaco, Bahamas Islands

March 17, 2024; Lynyard Cay to Green Turtle Cay; Today’s run: 30 miles

Clicking on the pictures, allows the viewer to see them in a larger, and slideshow format without the captions.

The passage from Lynyard Cay to Green Turtle Cay is marked on the above chart in Red. Whale Cay Passage is identified with a green line, and Green Turtle Cay, in lime green.

To navigate the shallow banks near Whale Cay, a channel leads boats east of the Cay into the open water of the Atlantic Ocean, (shown on the chart above in white, on the right), and through Whale Cay Passage.

The channel, Whales Cay Passage, circumnavigates the shoals, but it can become dangerous during a strong northerly swell. During those times, when swells break into waves, the passage can become impassable. Due to good planning, the day we navigated the channel, (above), conditions were good. But 9 days later, a 36ft/11m sailboat, broached; lost control in the steepened waves, took a wave over the side, and sunk. The 3 crewmembers were rescued. Boaters now have another obstacle to keep clear-of when navigating the channel. Apparently, during calm conditions, the top of the boat’s mast is visible.

Green Turtle Cay, 3.5 miles long, one half mile wide.

Green Turtle Cay was named for the hundreds of green turtles that once lived in the shallow Atlantic waters around the Cay. Pirates, Spanish, and settlers, depended on their meat for survival. Other than a few rodents, turtle meat was their main supply of protein.

In the picture above, the marina is in the background, and the mooring field in the foreground. One night, a strong south wind blew through the harbour causing boats at anchor, to drag and smash into other boats tied to mooring balls.
How do you convey that your mooring ball is taken when your boat is not tied to it? Tie a series of inflatable, rubber duckies to it!
We enjoyed the food at The Boathouse restaurant located at the Green Turtle Resort.
In the adjacent Tipsy Turtle Bar, U.S. dollar bills cover the walls and ceilings. Beneath the bills, and throughout the pub, the walls are constructed of local pine, felled during the Great Abacos booming pine industry. (1905 -early ’70s.)

At the end of one of the docks, conch and mutton snapper, are prepared for ceviche, a mixture of seafood and lime juice, by a local entrepreneur offering meals for catering.
From the marina, it was an easy walk to reach a beach where turtles and rays often gather to be fed by tourists.
We’re always attempting to get some exercise at our stopovers. The Tranquil Turtle Beach Bar, was a good distance from the marina and that hill in the background, was steeper than it looks.
The Beach Bar overlooks the ocean and a beautiful beach with shallow water lapping against the shore; a great place for families to play.
The site attracts vacation-goers from nearby rental cottages; it was a busy place while we were there.
To explore the island, we rented a golf cart from the marina-based office.
Garbage is collected, and then separated into piles of wood, cardboard, plastic, metal and electronic waste. It is then trucked to the pier where it is loaded onto a ship to be recycled on the mainland.
Paved sideroads lead to beaches and cottages; tourism is the largest industry on the island.

1783: Another haven for British Loyalists who made a good living retrieving floating goods from wreckages of cargo ships under sail. According to an article written in 1867 in the magazine: Chamber’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, a British traveler, who stayed on the island 6 months, reported that 7 wrecks had taken place during his stay. Following the retrieval of goods from the shipwrecks, town auctions took place whereby locals bid on necessities, merchandise to sell, and even luxuries.

When the wrecking industry dwindled due to better navigation including the construction of lighthouses* and the installation of channel markers, it was discovered that pineapples, (pine-apples), grew well on the cay. Huge numbers of the fruit were exported to the U.S. and England until the Untied States annexed Hawaii in 1898. Oranges and limes were also shipped to New York from the island. Other occupations included sponging, turtle and shark harvesting, and captaining fast, locally built, sailing vessels to smuggle supplies through enemy blockades during the American Civil War, (1861). The fortunes made during those times, built and furnished good-sized homes in a town that at that time, boasted a population of 2000. (Abaco Sun).

*Lighthouses: The British traveler and author of the Chamber’s Journal article, (1867), (mentioned above), suggested that lighthouse keepers throughout the Bahama Islands, should be given a salary of 80£ a year, “to place them beyond the temptation of a bribe” [that would encourage them to distinguish lights on lighthouses.]

NEW PLYMOUTH TODAY

New Plymouth: population: 450
New Plymouth, named after New Plymouth in Massachusetts, and located on the south end of the island, took a direct hit from Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Wind speeds were clocked at 180 mph. A few buildings in town have not been restored since that hurricane.
Treasure Island, just 10 km from New Plymouth, has several resorts, and an airport. The New Plymouth ferry, (above), makes several return trips daily to the Island delivering workers to the resorts, and bringing tourist to New Plymouth.
It was surprising to find a large, well stocked grocery store in New Plymouth. But Green Turtle Cay is assessable only by boat and the owners of island cottages, and renters in New Plymouth and all across the Cay, would need a good source of groceries. The store included freezers full of meat and assorted refrigerated fresh vegetables.
Miss Emily’s, a simple, but ‘famous’ restaurant throughout the Caribbean for their original Goombay Smash, a combination of dirty rum, coconut rum, apricot rum and a splash of pineapple juice. ( Attaching dollar bills to walls in tourist restaurants, has become popular.) The evening we were there, we ordered fish dinners. It was the best prepared fish we had eaten in the Bahamas, and even in many mainland restaurants. When I complimented the waiter on the meal, he replied that the cook was a local graduate from a culinary school in Florida; someone who had returned home to hone their new skills.
After dinner, we headed back to the marina. The golf carts do not have headlights, and we made sure we were back at the boat before dark. But the following day, we took the dinghy back into town.
After ordering 2 cups of tea from the Calypso Coffee & Tea takeout window that a young woman was operating out of her home, …
…she suggested we take her 2 chairs over to a nearby dock to enjoy the ambiance.
The church overlooking the harbour is St. Peter’s Church, Anglican/Episcopal, (1879), rebuilt in 2009. On Sundays, everything in town is closed except for the church.
An ocean-sized cargo ship stops in New Plymouth to unload an array of supplies.

LOYALIST MEMORIAL SCULPTURE GARDEN, New Plymouth: A tribute to the Loyalists and slaves who settled The Abacos. The garden is laid out in the form of a Union Jack.

A plaque in the garden reads: Tyrannized for their differences of opinion, active loyalists tolerated verbal abuse, loss of civil rights and property, and endured physical torture and wretched imprisonment. Some Tories were even executed as traitors.

(Above),’The Landing”, Life-size bronze figures of 2 girls, one black, the other white. One child holds a conch shell, a symbol of the Bahama Islands, the other holds the Union Jack, the flag of Great Britain.

The garden contains 24 busts of prominent Bahamians, each from a different island, many descendants of Loyalists or slaves who played a significant roll in the development of the Bahama Islands: teachers, lawyers, government officials, boat builders, sea captains, businessmen, and others, multi-talented in farming, carpentry, telegraph management, preaching and numerous other abilities. Jeanne Thompson, (sculpture), was a descendent of a slave family, a contemporary playwright and the country’s second female attorney.

A visit to the cemetery turned up generations of family names, often descendants of the earliest settlers: Roberts, Lowe, Saunders; but the oldest gravesites, lay weathered, eroded and nameless.

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3 responses to “Green Turtle Cay: Green Turtle Club Resort and Marina, (including New Plymouth), Great Abaco, Bahamas Islands”

  1. Thomas C Post avatar
    Thomas C Post

    I LOVE Green Turtle Cay. So glad you guys got to stop there.

    Tom Post

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  2. Mary Anne parkinson avatar
    Mary Anne parkinson

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  3. phlbrwn avatar
    phlbrwn

    New Plymouth is a tidy community!

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