Chubb Cay in the Berry Islands

Chubb Cay, Berry Islands, Private Resort. Complete with marina, airstrip, restaurant, Infiniti pool and beautiful beach. This place is a riot after spending months in remote islands with no amenities for the most part. The only resort type place we went to so far has been Atlantis.

The Chubb Cay resort just entered into bankruptcy protection in March of 2009 when we were there. I don’t know what the situation is as of now, but I believe the marina is in operation at the very least. This is the link to their web site, but does not seem to be updated in some time. http://www.chubcay.com

Anchoring vs. Marina Fees. The cost to stay at the marina is over $4 per foot, 40 cents for a gallon of water, and $0.65 kWh for electricity hook up. A bit pricey for us cheap cruisers. So we anchored as close to the beach as we could get. You’ll see Black Diamond in about 10 feet of water in the back ground of many of these photos. We anchored in the lee of the cay some what protected from the waves, it was the best place to anchor and not be too far away. However, we still experienced some wave action. We were anchored in the lee of Chubb cay, so if the anchor dragged, we would just drag into the shallow sand a bit of a distance away. No worries! Since we were in the lee of the island, the boat wanted to point into the wind, but the waves created around the cay protection slapped the boat on the side. This made for uncomfortable sleeping conditions. This was the only time I had to set up a stern anchor so the boat would point into the waves and current. We took our Fortress Danforth into the dinghy, and dropped it some 80 feet from the stern. Then brought the rope rode in the stern chock, and on to our winch. Once the anchor was set nicely, we winched it in, until the bow was pointing into the direction we desired.

We went ashore with our dinghy, tied up at the dinghy dock no charge. Explored the island, resort, marina and villa villages that have been for sale. Some have been purchased and still being used. The marina, air strip and restaurant staff still operating. The resort was not operational, no staff pool side, pool left as is, with drinks still in the fridge of the pool bar. Owners who had purchased a villas are still using them, flying in with private planes or charters. We met a couple of pilots pool side, they had just flown in a couple with their provisions from Florida. I suspect the place is up and running today, it think it was just going through some restructuring. However, you’ll find many places like this in the Bahamas, all built with good intentions, but never seem to flourish. It is most likely due to difficulties in getting to them, high cost of provisioning, building materials, everything is very costly. All the islands in the Bahamas have to make their own water and electricity. This increase the costs of everything.

We ate lunch in the restaurant, and then frolicked in the Infiniti pool much of the afternoon, and played on the beach with the kids. The kids loved making enormous sand castles all afternoon. This was going to be my last opportunity to clean the bottom of the boat in these beautiful crystal clear waters before arriving to Florida. I hooked up my gas powered Honda snuba gear, jumped over the side, and started scrapping some of the slight build up on Black Diamond. This took about an hour or so to do. All the while keeping a good look out for sharks. Really I don’t think it is anything to worry about, I’ve never seen a single shark in the Bahamas, especially in the inside of the cuts, its just all those Jaws movies I have watched, that put the fear of sharks in humans. That and the fact that just out side the lee of the cay, a few hundred meters away, you’ll find  depths in the thousands of feet, in the North West Channel of the Tongue of the Ocean!

This is a great place to spend a few days, but due to our schedule in the morning we were going to be off early next stop Bimini.