White Point Beach All to Ourselves

Day 96- Our Own Private Beach at White Point

Today, Sunday, March 8th, we had planned to have a brisk sail up to Black Point Settlement which is the next spot of civilization up the chain of Exuma Cays. But, we are learning not to over plan lest we miss something really important.

The wind was perfect and we had just settled into the first hour of our brisk 6 to 7 knot sail to Black Point when we noticed the beautiful white sand beaches along our starboard side. Not only were the beaches beautiful; but also, no other boats were there! We knew that our boat was way out ahead of the 300 sail boats that were still in George Town for the Cruisers’ Week, but we didn’t imagine that we’d be lucky enough to find an anchorage with no boats along this heavily cruised part of the Exumas. Also, our charts confirmed that White Point stuck out far enough to the west that the north side anchorage provided protection from the prevailing winds. Yay! Perfect!
This was not a hard decision to make. Just two days ago we were heading down to the Jumentos and the Ragged Islands in cold blustery wind with little hope of finding some Ragged Island rocks to anchor behind and now soft white sandy beaches sheltered from the wind were beckoning us to come play. Ahhh—this is the cruising we signed up for! It didn’t take long for us to turn into the wind and furl all the sails. As a matter of fact, it didn’t take long for us to anchor and head to shore in the dinghy either!
In the pictures below you will see the following: 2 pictures of the beach with our dinghy in the foreground and the Caribbean Soul anchored out. There are two pictures of John snorkeling—one preparing to snorkel from the beached dinghy and the other swimming along. If it looks to you that there are two sharks in the water, don’t panic—it was John’s flippers on one end and his mask and snorkel on the other.













I decided it was too chilly to snorkel so went exploring up the sandy knoll. First I spied the resident osprey who sat tight in the dead palm tree right until I was almost next to the tree.

Then I took pictures of the south side beach (where we did not anchor) of White Point that separated our two beaches. You can see the vegetation & the pretty beach.

We decided to stay an extra day here. Besides, the roller furler for the jib was still causing problems and needed some work. Also, we discovered stone cairns along the shore that we wanted to look at close up and take pictures for you all.
What a lovely day in paradise!