NJ Charters Blog: Charter The Exumas, Where Pigs Don’t Fly…They Swim!

Visit the Northrop and Johnson Yacht Charters Website

Exumas Swimming Pig

The Exumas Island Chain, located in The Bahamas stretching 120 miles south out of Nassau, is an excellent charter location. Miles of pristine deserted beaches stretch beside multicolored clear blue and green waters. We loved cruising there. Yours may be the only footprints in the white and sometimes pink powdery sand. You can swim, snorkel in shallow waters for hours, and the shelling is excellent. This is a charter location perfect for fun in the sun and really enjoying warm tropical waters.

Feeding Pig Great Major Cay

Swimming Pig, Great Major Cay

Half way down the Exumas, and only accessible by yacht, is Big Major Cay, deserted except for the pink pigs and the few cats that live there. A favorite stopping place for visiting yachtsmen, the pigs and cats survive from the largess of their visitors, and survive very well. The piggiest of the pigs have learned, for first crack at the offerings, to swim out and greet the visiting ship’s tenders. I learned firsthand that lettuce is at the bottom of the food choices, Cheez-Its were far preferred. We watched the older pigs teaching the piglets how to swim, a new example of ecological adaptation. But be careful, as the overzealous pig has been known to try to board for extra snacks.

Staniel Cay

Big Major Cay is in the area of Staniel Cay and Thunderball Cave. You could spend several days there. Staniel Cay offers two restaurants and on Saturday nights a big outdoor barbeque is held where all diners mingle together at big communal picnic tables. Snorkel the nearby grotto Thunderball Cave appropriately named as the James Bond movie Thunderball was filmed there as well as the movie Splash. Shafts of light pierce through the rock formations into the blue pools in the grotto creating a mystical setting in which to snorkel over the coral formations and through the schools of tropical fish.

Thunderball Grotto, The Exumas