Adventures of the Yacht White Pepper: Little Harbor, Berry Islands--The Cabbage Island Anchorage

From Great Harbor to Little Harbor in the Berry Islands is an easy 22 n.mi. day sail. The entrance is deep and wide open. There is a selection of anchorages. The recommended anchorage is to the south behind Frozen Cay. Frozen Cay used to be called High Cay only a few years ago (including on my old Map Tech charts). This day White Pepper chose the anchorage behind Cabbage Cay because we wanted to be closer to the settlement at Little Harbor (more about that later) and because the weather was quite settled.

This latter fact was quite important as the anchor never bit. The ground looked like sand but acted like rock. None of the three boats in our anchorage ever got a set. However, the wind was so light that we lay to the chain for two days. The anchorage was a bit rolly. It was nothing too uncomfortable. I could see that in any kind of weather things would get really out of hand. The take away lession here is that I can not recommend the Cabbage Cay anchorage.

Little Harbor proper has a recommendation as a hurricane hole if one can tuck in close to the settlement. However, the depth is so shallow that one would have to wait for the storm surge to get in. If White Pepper ever comes this way again, she will opt for the remote Frozen Cay anchorage.

Eventually we did get into the “settlement” and to the famous Flo's Conch Restaurant. We were fortunate to meet Flo's daughter. She told us that her mother had passed three years ago. Her brother and his wife ran the restaurant. These were only two people left on the cay that had supported several families and 50 people in years past. She and her sister worked as personal assistants (nurses' aides) in the USA. We walked around the place. It was a compound of about an acre with cistern, generator, chickens, and geese. There was no road and no path to anywhere. There were enormous piles of conch shells along the shore that represented maybe 50 plus years of harvest. I found it remarkably isolated even by the standards of the Bahamian out islands. Soon enough no one will live here.

On a more cheerful note the conch lunch and Kalik beer were delightful, if overpriced. But one has to consider the effort required to hold back the bush in the price of the food.