Royal Island, Eluthera December 30, 2008

Eluthera did not see very much of Sea Star. We motor sailed or sailed, averaging 6.5 to 7 knots the 56 miles in the company of another boat, a Defever trawler, and stopped at an anchorage we read quite a bit about in our guidebooks; Royal Island in the North part of Eluthera. The anchorage was accessible and seemed to have the needed depth and protection from the winds for our boats, and so we entered the harbor just as the afternoon was over. As both boats were anchoring I heard the Captain on the other boat say, “They’ve raped the place!”

It seems that the other cruisers had been to this anchorage a few years previous and it had been lovely, and cruiser friendly, allowing visitors to the island at will. Their daughter, a runner, had run around on the limestone roads and the family had visited the ruins of a fabulous spread out home with out buildings and beautiful terraced gardens built at the beginning of the nineteenth century. What we found in 2008 were signs that read “keep out” and “”private property”. The island had been sold and development had begun. There were huge earth moving machines that had torn out the native foliage to open up the Atlantic view or the view to Eluthera Sound.

 There were new dirt roads where no roads had been and the access to the ruins of the home had been removed. We did manage to scramble out of the dinghy onto some rocks and visit what was left of the old site; the terraces were gone and the building was obviously to be torn down with orange x’s marring the stone walls. The rumor is that the building is on hold because of the United States impact on the economy. The impact on cruisers will be felt because the Royal Island anchorage was used by boats traveling out of Abaco to Eluthera and the Exumas or when the migration north begins again back to the Abaco and returning to Florida and northern destinations in May or June to escape hurricanes.

Our decision after Royal Island was to continue south to the Exhuma Islands as the weather allowed. The next day we continued on south to Allen Harbor, Exhumas.