Sailing Ohana

Conception is the island I was most interested in visiting on this adventure. It is a protected Bahamian national land and sea park, and a nesting habitat for the beautiful Caribbean White Long-tailed Tropicbird. The cruising guides discourage traveling there unless the weather conditions are perfect, so I wasn’t sure we would be in the right place — at the right time — to go. We luckily had an ideal weather window so we took off with SV Grace from Calabash Bay.

It’s hard to find the words to describe Conception. It is totally isolated and because its elevation is so low, it feels like you’re always in the ocean, even when on land. The water is a stunningly clear, like we could see a small starfish off the side of the boat in over 20 feet of water. It also has that glorious torquoise color that reflects off of everything, including the white tropicbirds soaring overhead with their long tails trailing behind them, giving them a bright torquoise hue.

Our second day at Conception was one of those very rare and magical days in the islands where there is no wind, and the water becomes like glass. As if Conception didn’t already feel like a different planet, this brought the other-worldliness to another level. Since there were almost no waves in the ocean, we towed the boys on our paddleboards behind the dinghys as we went to explore the mangroves. There was a nice blue hole where the mangrove canals merged and we did a little snorkeling.

Our next excursion was to go snorkeling on the protected reefs that surround the island. This is supposed to be some of the best snorkeling/diving in the Bahamas and some say, beyond. There were towering corals that went on for miles, and really cool coral heads dotting the coast. It was obvious that this was a spectacular ocean ecosystem at one time, but sadly the coral was mostly dead and the diversity of the fish population was tragically small. This is due to pollution, overfishing, and climate change. Our hearts hurt when we realize our boys will never see the healthy, spectacular reefs that are a part of our happiest childhood memories. We swam and swam and searched for anything more lively, with no luck. As we drove the dinghys through the glassy water, looking for better snorkeling, we passed by dramatic cliffs and rocks, in water that was every color of blue you could imagine. I took photos with my phone camera, which don’t capture the beauty at all. We decided to circumnavigate the island since it is almost never possible, because of the typical wind and waves. I took photos of the boys in front of a giant osprey nest on the south end of the island.

The boys took the SV Grace family fishing on our boat one afternoon, and I decided to stay ashore with Morris. We hiked around to the East side where the views were incredible, and I found a nice little climbing spot from the beach where ropes had been attached to help. People say that if you climb up to the top of it and hold up your phone, you can sometimes get a cell signal. I tried it, and it did not work.

In contrast to the southern islands that have a lot of litter that washes over from Cuba, Conception is almost totally without evidence of humans. I did find the container of trash that the national park workers pick up when they do occasional visits and of course, it was all plastics; mostly plastic water and drink bottles. If you are reading this and you buy single-use plastics (especially water and drink bottles) please, PLEASE STOP. It is so upsetting to see those things everywhere we go. The plastics kill the sea life, birds, and other animals, not to mention how awful it looks, and all the chemicals it takes to manufacture them. They are absolutely horrible for our environment. On the south end of the beach where we anchored, I came upon a much more interesting piece of litter… The remnants of a very old shipwreck, which was fun to poke around on and imagine the story behind it. I learned later that some of the half-buried hunks of metal are actually cannons. The fishing crew came back really late (and empty-handed) so I grumpily got on the boat after watching the sunset with Mike and another cruiser we met the day before.

We didn’t want to leave Conception but we needed to communicate via email and text about some business things we have at home, so SV Grace came to the rescue… They have a booster so that they can sometimes get service in these remote places. They hoisted it up their mast and we were able to communicate by pulling to to the side of their boat and using their signal. The following day we tried hoisting my phone up the mast on our boat and it worked well enough for a period of time. Unfortunately we didn’t tie a line to pull it down and it wasn’t heavy enough to drop with the line we used to pull it up, so we sent Jackson up the mast to retrieve it. You can see in the video that our white mast has the torquoise water reflecting on it. Jackson enjoyed it so much, he’s been asking to go up the mast every day since then!

We hung around Conception longer than we had planned (maybe too long according to Tommy), so when it was time to leave, we felt very ready to move on. Our last night there was rolly and swelly, so we got a taste of why people say the weather has to be perfect to stay there. Since the weather was changing and other kid boats came up on the last night to continue to Cat Island with us, we never made our intended trip back to Long Island.