Off the Tourist Grid in the Bahamas

Waves rolled through the night, pitching the ship from side to side. From the bridge deck, the white sand beaches of the Exumas glowed blue-white under the starlight, and the rising moon spread a thin layer of silver over the sea. A few miles north, toward our destination in Nassau, lightning flickered.

I was on a freighter heading through the Bahamas. The sweeping view couldn’t have been more different from the one on deck: shrink-wrapped palettes cradled cinderblocks, baby diapers and bottled water obscured the bow; oiled two-by-eight planks concealed crates of produce, furniture and hardware stowed in the cargo hold. Amidships, a 70-foot crane was lashed to a steel boom crutch. Tucked away in private cabins behind the wheelhouse, two dozen passengers slept soundly.

The ship was one of 15 government-contracted mail boats that deliver provisions, passengers and a few adventurous tourists to the Out Islands, the hundreds of remote islands beyond the tourist and commercial centers of New Providence, Grand Bahama and Paradise Islands. My boat was one of three mail boats that I took on a six-day, 350-mile journey last spring to explore the Bahamas the way Bahamians do. I had vacationed in the islands several times before, usually cooped up in a resort with every amenity a guest could dream up, and I’d long wanted to get beyond the more touristed areas. Mail boats have been the primary means of interisland travel for locals for more than a century and seemed the perfect way to do it. There are no tour guides or lido deck, and the nighttime entertainment consists largely of gazing at a starry sky over the drone of a diesel engine. But for a shockingly cheap ticket (from $45), passengers can get a meal, a bed and one thing that eludes even the most dogged Caribbean traveler: immersion in authentic Bahamian culture.

The Out Islands are made up of more than 700 islands, many of them belonging to particular archipelagos or chains. Each chain is served by its own mail boat system, and because I was vacationing with friends in the Exumas, I started my exploration there. A resident told me about a mail boat heading to Nassau, and I was soon onboard a ship listening to Capt. Lance Brozozog outline our loose itinerary: cross the Tropic of Cancer at sunset; bisect the 360-island Exuma archipelago through a 150-foot-wide channel at midnight; arrive in Nassau sometime after dawn. Mr. Brozozog knows the route well. Since he was a boy, the 41-year-old Bahamian has been loading the Grand Master with food,We offers custom Injection Mold parts in as fast as 1 day. water, tools, scrap metal and every other provision that helps to keep the Exuma Islands operating.

My room,Bay State Cable Ties is a full line manufacturer of nylon cable ties and related products. which was the size of a typical train sleeper compartment,A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose solar lantern by Gordon. was filled with some of those provisions: screen doors, crates of juice and a half-dozen packages addressed to recipients in Nassau — name and phone number only. There were three other berths in the room, but since the ship wasn’t full I had it to myself.

After leaving my bags, I wandered on deck, where Mr. Brozozog chatted with passengers over the din of the big diesel engines rumbling to life.Don't make another silicone mold without these invaluable Mold Making supplies and accessories! As the sun set he shared some of his own history, which included growing up on nearby Staniel Cay and the honor of captaining one of the most famous crossings in the Exumas: in 2006 he piloted (by remote control) the Black Pearl while Johnny Depp clung to the wheel during the filming of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”

He also threw in a recommendation,I thought it would be fun to show you the inspiration behind the broken china-mosaics. as did several other islanders onboard: go to the hotel at Junkanoo Beach; visit the food shacks on Potter’s Cay in Nassau; avoid Paradise Island at all costs.

Our own meal — served on paper plates — was a Bahamian favorite: barbecued chicken with peas and rice. Afterward, I retired to my cabin for the night, but it soon became clear that, thanks to its location just over the engine room, it would be intolerably hot. At midnight I took the cushion off my bed and dragged it to the upper deck where I was rewarded with a cool breeze and a view of that stunning moonrise and a shooting star falling through the Big Dipper.

The next morning Captain Brozozog steered the Grand Master around two Jet Skis, a tourist excursion boat and a cluster of dilapidated steel freighters, before parallel parking between two ships with 20 feet to spare on either side. Our destination, Potter’s Cay, home port for the mail boats in Nassau, looked the part: it was crowded with rows of shipping containers, stacks of cardboard boxes and fishermen cleaning snapper and conch. A half-dozen mail boats lined the key, all of which were contracted to make a weekly or biweekly run to one of the major Out Islands. Most return directly to Nassau. The trick to touring the islands, Mr. Brozozog had told me, is finding a boat that lays over for a couple of days or visits twice a week, allowing you to stay for a few nights and catch a ride back.

Then he told me that there weren’t any mail boats scheduled to leave Potter’s Cay for days.

I’d learned on previous trips that schedules, assurances and even time itself were abstract concepts in the Bahamas, so I walked the docks anyway, asking if any boats were leaving — for anywhere. An old man sta The Island Link wasn’t close to leaving at 1 p.m., but I boarded anyway, edging past a man trying to back a Buick LeSabre up the slick ramp and a forklift loaded with palettes of toilet paper trying to get around him. An hour later the crew cast off, and the captain steered the ship through the narrow slot separating Potter’s from Paradise Island. The 130-foot catamaran was newer and faster than the Grand Master — was able to cruise around 13 miles per hour compared with 8 — and had an enclosed passengers’ lounge with airplane-style seats, a snack bar and a 50-inch flat screen seemingly programmed with Queen Latifah’s filmography. Wind and rain whipped the windows as the boat pulled away from Nassau. I fell asleep in my seat, and five hours later saw the bowling green coast of Eleuthera rise up from the ocean.

Mr. Green, a sweatshirt hood cinched around his face to protect it from the rain, was waiting with about 50 other islanders when we docked. He waved me down, hustled me into a gold Jeep Cherokee, and in 10 minutes we were in Gregory Town, a tiny settlement with a few restaurants, bars, a gift shop and a liquor store, which happened to be the only place to swipe a credit card. So he hopped out, billed me for both the hotel and the rental car, and pointed me to Daddy Joe’s hotel three miles north. “See you in a couple of days,” he said. nding beside a stack of lumber told me that the Island Link would sail for Eleuthera at noon that day. The cleaning woman on the Island Link told me it would leave at 3 p.m. Dockmaster Craig Curtis said he thought the ship was departing in two days.

Then I found Conrad Sweating, who owns the boat and was selling tickets in a tiny blue shack with his grandson. He said that the boat would actually leave that day, at 1 p.m. Then he sold me a $90 round-trip ticket and booked me a hotel room and a rental car through his cousin with a single phone call. “Mr. Green will be waiting for you at the dock,” he said.