Bahamas Anchoring Guide: The Banks, the Cuts & the Bahamian Moor

Read the Water, Not the Chart

Bahamian piloting has a name — “visual piloting rules” — and one instrument: your eyes, behind polarised sunglasses, with the sun high and ideally behind you. Charts of the banks are useful for the big picture and honest about their own limits; sandbores move, and the survey data in places is older than your boat. The colour, though, never lies:

Two habits complete the skill. First, mistrust the light: early morning and late afternoon sun flattens every colour into glare, which is why Bahamian passages are planned for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Second, respect the cuts. The passes between the bank and the ocean — Staniel Cay Cut, Little Farmer's Cut, Whale Cay Passage in the Abacos — carry 2–3 knots of current at peak, and when an outgoing tide meets an onshore swell the Whale in particular produces a rage: breaking seas across the whole passage that close it to everyone. Time the cuts for slack water, and listen to the morning VHF nets before you commit. Every anchorage in this guide is on our Bahamas anchorages hub with coordinates, depth, holding and a recommended alarm radius.

The Bahamian Moor: Two Anchors, One Boat Length of Swing

Here is the problem the technique solves. Anchored on a single hook near a cut, your boat lies to the current. At slack water the stream dies, the boat wanders, and when the tide returns from the opposite direction the boat charges back over the anchor and snatches it from behind — a load reversal that can break out even a well-set hook, at exactly the moment you are asleep. And because the boat now swings through a circle two rode-lengths wide, a tight anchorage full of single-hook boats becomes a game of bumper cars at 3 a.m.

The Bahamian moor replaces that circle with a pivot:

1. Set the first anchor up-current, exactly as you normally would, backing down until it holds.
2. Fall back to double scope — if you want 30 m of rode on each anchor, drop back 60 m — and lower the second anchor down-current.
3. Winch yourself back to the midpoint, setting the second anchor as you go, until you lie between the two with both rodes led to the bow.
4. Let the second rode hang slack under the first. When the tide turns, the boat swaps ends around her own bow — the swing circle is barely a boat length.

Each reversal loads an anchor that was set from the direction the pull now comes — no snatching, no reset lottery. The cost is honest: two anchors to recover (recover the slack one first), rodes that can twist around each other after several tide cycles, and more work in the dinghy if you set the second by hand. So use it where it earns its keep — beside cuts, in the narrow channels between cays, in tight pockets like Hopetown's harbour approaches where swinging room is short — and skip it in the open bank anchorages where a single anchor at generous scope on limitless sand remains the simpler, stronger answer.

Clearing In, and What It Costs in 2026

Fly the yellow Q flag on arrival and clear at a port of entry before anything else: West End and Bimini from Florida, Marsh Harbour or Green Turtle Cay for the Abacos, Nassau, or George Town if you arrive from the south. Only the captain goes ashore until you are cleared. The paperwork got a full rework on 1 April 2026, and it is worth knowing because most of what the internet will tell you is a schedule that no longer exists:

• Temporary cruising permit (30 days): $150 up to 30 ft · $250 for 31–50 ft · $350 for 51–100 ft · $600 over 100 ft. No free re-entry.
• Six months: $300 up to 50 ft · $750 for 51–100 ft · $2,000 over 100 ft — with one free re-entry.
• Twelve months: $500 · $1,000 · $3,000 by the same tiers, with two free re-entries. Frequent visitors can buy the two-year FDCC ($1,500 under 50 ft) for unlimited entries.
• The anchorage fee. New in this schedule, and paid with the permit: it applies only if you actually anchor — a boat that runs marina to marina owes nothing — and starts around $50 for a 30-day permit on boats under 50 ft, rising with size and duration. In effect the Bahamas now sells the hook separately from the water.
• Fishing is no longer included. A separate 30-day permit ($100 under 50 ft) covers trolling and the conch you were planning to eat. And a crew beyond three people pays $30 a head in passenger tax.

File and pay through the government's online portal (Click2Clear) or on arrival. Keep the receipt aboard — the Defence Force does ask, particularly in the Exumas.

The Exumas: The Bank, the Sound and the Park

The Exumas are a 100-mile chain of cays with the shallow bank on the west side and the deep Exuma Sound on the east, so every day's sail is a choice of lane and every change of lane is a cut. The anchoring rhythm is the reason people come back for a tenth season: lunch behind one cay, supper behind another, turquoise water and white sand holding that our data rates good-to-excellent almost everywhere — except the grass. At Black Point Settlement, the largest true community in the chain, the holding drops to fair over sand-and-grass: dig the anchor into a white patch, dive it, and give it more scope than the depth seems to deserve. The postcard stops pull the crowds — Staniel Cay with the Thunderball Grotto and 3-knot current in its cut, Pig Beach at Big Major next door, Compass Cay and its nurse sharks — and at the bottom of the chain George Town is the cruiser capital of the western Atlantic: four hundred boats in Elizabeth Harbour in season, a morning net, and the sheltered pockets of Stocking Island across the way.

In the middle of the chain sits the Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park — 176 square miles of no-take zone run by the Bahamas National Trust since 1958, which makes it the oldest of its kind anywhere. The rules are absolute: no fishing of any kind, no collecting — not a shell, not a sea fan — and mooring fields at the headquarters anchorage of Warderick Wells, Emerald Rock and elsewhere that you request on VHF 09 in the morning (no reservations; the ParkPay app takes the money after you have the ball). Moorings run about BSD $27 a night under 40 ft and $36 to 50 ft; anchoring inside the park — permitted outside the mooring fields, coral and restricted areas — costs BSD $0.45 per foot per night. Warderick's north field, a crescent of deep water in a river of sand, is the most beautiful place you will ever pay $27 to sleep, and the current runs through it exactly as the paragraph above warned. Shroud Cay at the park's north end adds a mangrove creek you ride at mid-tide like a lazy river. See Warderick Wells, Staniel Cay and George Town in the Exumas anchorages.

The Abacos: The Sheltered Sea

The Sea of Abaco is the gentlest cruising water in the Bahamas — a protected lagoon between Great Abaco and its barrier cays, two to five metres deep, with a harbour town every few miles. Marsh Harbour is the base and port of entry; Hopetown on Elbow Cay, under its candy-striped lighthouse, is the postcard, with a pool of all-round shelter inside and 1–2 knots of current through the narrow entrance — as neat a Bahamian-moor candidate as exists. Man-O-War Cay is the boatbuilding settlement (and firmly dry — no alcohol ashore, a rule you respect as a guest); Green Turtle Cay's Black Sound gives hurricane-hole shelter behind New Plymouth; Guana Cay trades shelter for Nipper's and the ocean beach. At the south end, Little Harbour — Pete's Pub, the bronze foundry, all-round protection — has a shallow entrance you take only in daylight on a rising tide. The one serious obstacle in the whole ground is Whale Cay Passage: the detour into the ocean that every boat bound between Green Turtle and Marsh Harbour must make, and the spot where an ebb tide against a north swell builds a rage that closes the door. The staging anchorage off the channel exists precisely so you can wait for the morning net to say “the Whale is passable.” See Hopetown, Marsh Harbour and Little Harbour in the Abacos anchorages.

Nassau: The Gateway You Anchor Past

Nassau is where the flights land, the provisions live and the cruise ships tower; it is a fine place to clear in and a poor place to linger at anchor. The main harbour anchorage works — 3–8 m, sand and mud, good shelter from the south and west — but it is open to the north, washed by constant traffic, and patrolled by every wake in the western Atlantic. The local secret is four miles east: Rose Island, a ribbon of sand and casuarinas with turquoise anchoring off its northern beaches and Nassau's towers politely out of earshot. Athol Island closer in serves the same purpose for a lunch stop, and Montagu Bay holds the overflow east of the bridges. Treat New Providence as a hinge between the Abacos and the Exumas — clear in, fill the lockers at the best markets in the country, sleep at Rose Island, and go. See Rose Island and the rest of the Nassau & New Providence anchorages.

Anchoring Rules & Etiquette in the Bahamas

• Clear in first. Q flag to a port of entry, captain ashore, papers and the new fees settled before the first swim.
• Anchor in sand, never in grass or coral. The white patches hold like cement and cost nothing to use; the dark ones drag, and in the parks they are protected habitat.
• In the Exuma park, the fish outrank you. No fishing, no collecting, VHF 09 for a ball, ParkPay for the fee, and anchoring only outside the fields, coral and restricted areas.
• Time the cuts, respect the Whale. Slack water for the passes, the morning net for Whale Cay Passage, and no cut at all against an onshore swell.
• Keep clear of the mail boat. Every settlement's dock hosts the freight run that stocks the shelves — the government dock approach stays open, in George Town, Black Point and everywhere else.
• Show an anchor light, dusk to dawn. The same worldwide rule — overnight anchoring rules has the detail — and on the unlit banks it is the only thing that makes you exist at night.

Why an Anchor Alarm Matters Here

Bahamian anchoring looks like the easiest in the world — 4 m of gin-clear water over sand you personally inspected. The physics underneath is busier. Every six hours the tide reverses and re-tests the set from the opposite direction; on a single anchor near any current, that is two genuine break-out opportunities per night. The grass patches drag with almost no warning — the anchor skates rather than plows, so the first sign is often distance, not motion. And the winter cold fronts do what the trades never do: swing the wind through 360° in a night, turning the sheltered side of a cay into the exposed one while the boat rides a rode set for yesterday's weather.

A GPS anchor alarm watches all three failure modes the same way — as position change — and wakes you while there is still water to leeward. Set the radius for your full swing: our Bahamian pages run 60–95 m for single-anchor bays (shallow water means long scope for little depth, so circles are wide). On a Bahamian moor, invert the logic exactly as on a Mediterranean stern-to berth: the boat pivots in place, so a tight radius — 25–30 m, boat length plus GPS scatter — turns the alarm into a dragged-anchor detector with a six-hour head start. In the Exuma park, run it on the ball too; GPS accuracy for anchor alarms covers how to choose a radius that ignores the swing and catches the slide, and the scope calculator does the arithmetic for the depth you actually have.

The Bottom Line

The Bahamas rewards a different literacy from anywhere else in the tropics: colours instead of contour lines, tide tables instead of mooring apps, and a second anchor where other countries would sell you a ball. Learn to read the turquoise, cross the cuts at slack, keep the hook out of the grass, pay the park its $27 and the government its new fees — and the payoff is the western hemisphere's best anchoring: ten thousand square miles of sand in swimming-pool water, most of it empty. Set the hook where you can see it, run a GPS anchor alarm against the turning tide, and the banks will give you the calmest — and prettiest — nights of your sailing life.