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Dark sky and perfect seeing on an out-island of the Bahamas

With Jonathan and Katherine Bein

In February 2006, my wife, Jacki, and I, along with our friends Jonathan and Katherine Bein, rented a lovely 3-bedroom house 50 yards from the beach on a sparsely inhabited island in the northern Bahamas. We brought my 12.5” portable telescope and set it up on the back deck (facing south) each night to see the southerly gems not normally visible from northern Virginia. Days were spent on the reef that runs the length of the island or just on the completely deserted beach.

Washington Post Travel Section

It all began with an article in the Washington Post in 2004 describing the out-islands of the Bahamas as non-touristy, undiscovered gems. I scoured the internet to try to understand the various aspects of each of these islands. In particular, I focused on the most uninhabited island that had superior snorkeling just off-shore which was Great Guana Cay. It is east of Abaco, the northernmost Bahama at a latitude about the same as Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Using a great internet site, I found a nice house for ~$1400/week [http://www.vrbo.com/10668]. Our friends from NOVAC, Jonathan and Katherine Bein agreed that this could be a great trip and we all secured plane tickets and rented the house for a week in February, 2006. This trip was to combine reading, beach bumming, snorkeling (scuba - Jonathan only), and astronomy.

Getting There 

            We flew through Miami and then on a small jet to Abaco (Marsh Harbor).  My telescope came through baggage just fine.  We were told that there were no grocery stores on Great Guana Cay and so we had to stock up on Abaco and take everything with us on the ferry.  So we grabbed a cab at the airport, whose driver was a delightful woman who took us to the grocery store (about 20 bags of groceries), the liquor store (wine and rum for the week), and dropped us at the ferry dock.  We caught the ferry to Guana and received a bit of a surprise as they charged us a $1 for each bag - we should have packed lots of stuff per double bag, halving the surcharge.  Nevertheless, we arrived at the dock on Guana just fine and were met by our landlord who had a tiny pickup truck.  She drove us first to a place where we could rent a golf cart for the week.   Golf carts are the major mode of transportation on the island.  Then she took us to our house.  It was exactly as advertised.  It was a very nice house with 3-bedrooms, a fine kitchen, and great decks.  One was in the front looking out over the turquoise water 50-yards away and the other deck in the back facing south, our preferred direction for nighttime viewing. 

            We chose this house because it was very isolated, nearly a mile north of ‘town’.  ‘Town’ was actually quite cute with a few small restaurants and a small, but very nice harbor.  The total population of Great Guana Cay is only a bit over 100.  Most of the inhabitants are descendants of ‘Loyalists’ who left the rebellious colonies in ~1776.  Our house turned out to be an excellent choice as a short path to the beach revealed an empty stretch of sand for a mile or two in each direction.  You could see the reef offshore about 50 yards.  Jonathan, the strongest swimmer, dove in fairly early and swam out to the reef.  It turned out that, if you walk up the beach about a mile, the reef comes closer to shore and it was easier to get to.

            As Jonathan, a fabulous cook, began preparing our dinner, I assembled the telescope.   I brought my 12.5” portable dob that had been on many other trips (www.angelfire.com/stars2/bwolfe).   After dinner, we set it up outside and had our first looks.  There was an excellent sky with good contrast.  As the night wore on we got great looks at showpiece objects in Centaurus.  Omega Centauri was really fabulous at 235x.  The whole eyepiece was ablaze with stars.  This is truly one of the great objects.  Also, Centaurus A showed its dust lane quite clearly and looked every bit like a Big Mac.   NGC4945 was a long cigar-shaped galaxy that spanned a good share of the eyepiece.  Each of these objects is too far south for us to view from Northern Virginia, so they were real treats.  At some point we saw that Saturn was high in the sky and pointed the scope for a look. 

      The Astronomical Highlight
            Wow!  Never had any of us seen Saturn with such clarity.  Great Guana Cay is a narrow strip of land with only 400 yards separating the Sea of Abaco from the Atlantic Ocean.  All this water provided a perfectly stable heat sink to calm the air.  No question about it, the seeing here was an 11 (apologies to Spinal Tap).  The Crepe Ring was clear, the Cassini Division stood out as a black line on the rings and you could clearly see several colored cloud bands on the planet.  We all Ooohed and Aaahed about this for some time.  I kept blaming Jonathan for not bringing a Barlow lens thus limiting us to 235x.

      Snorkeling

            Each day we hiked along the beach to see the island or we drove our golf cart to the far reaches (the island is only 5-6 miles long).  We were in the water every day and our best day was when we rented a small (~18-ft) boat with an outboard and went to Scotland Cay, a neighboring out-island.  Anchoring next to the reef, we jumped into the water to find very good soft corals with plenty of fish.  With a $6 disposable underwater camera we took some shots that, amazingly, were ok.

            We discovered a beach bar called Nippers about a mile down the beach from us and had a great lunch one day.  Everyone had told us not to miss it as it is the social highlight of the island.  It was quite nice with excellent seafood, but ‘social highlight’?  This is an island that you seek out because you want to be isolated.  And, for that purpose, it was excellent. 

     Jonathan, Katherine, Barry & Jacki at Nipper’s Beach Bar
 

     Going Home

            When our week was over and we had had many nights at the eyepiece and many days on the reef and fabulous food every night, we packed up, returned our golf cart and boarded the ferry to catch the flight to Miami.   All-in-all it was a really enjoyable trip.  I would do it again in a heartbeat.

 

 

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