I just got back from a 5 day trip to Long Island and once again I must say that I love the family islands. People are so friendly, you can walk around bare foot and nobody cares and the beaches are 10 times nicer than the ones here in Nassau.
Anyway, we started off our little trip by leaving Nassau on Monday morning with the usual hour of delay. Got to Stella Maris airport after 45min flight, rented a car which can cost you between 60-75 usd. Long Island is about 60 miles long and the only decent road takes you from North to almost the most southern point of the island. All other roads are mainly "durt roads" therefore you may want to rent a 4WD.
We stayed at CapeSantaMaria village (
www.capesantamaria.com) which is definately the most beautiful place in Long Island. It's facing West so unless the wind is W, NW or maybe even SW riding in the bay is almost impossible. At the northen part of the resort there is a beautiful bay with waist deep water and soft sandy bottom. Unfortunalely the wind was blowing from E which means off-shore. I launched and kited for about 30min only to realize how gusty it was....so I've decided to go and look for better spots. Here is a photo of the bay:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3063634
The next day we didn't see the sun for one single second and it actually stopped raining only for few moments. This hasn't stopped us to go for a ride around the island and in about 2 hours we found ourself at the most Souther point called "Gordons" where again the beach was facing W:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3028496
On the way back we decided to make our trip a bit more adventurous so we took some "off-roads" that were leading the Eastern coast which is mainly rocky except for few bays where the reef breaks few hundred yards out.
This is one of the Bay that we have found, it's in "Pinders" settlement and has actually two bays divided by a small island called Guana Cay:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3028604
nice and flat in the inside and lots of waves breaking out at the reef.
Then we stopped at Dean's Blue Hole close to Scrub Hill settlement. The place is phenomenal, on one side you have a nice shallow bay and on the other hand this deep Blue Hole. I reckon that in right E maybe ESE wind the bay is ridable. The bottom looked pretty rocky though and landing and launching would not be a problem on this sandy beach:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3028642
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3028664
One more spot that it's worth to mention is the Bay at Lochabar in Clarence Town. This time the road was paved and there is a nice area to park and walk to the beach. The Lochabar Bay is protected by a series of Cays, it's a perfect spot for anchoring in E wind. On the right hand side there is a bigger Blue Hole that to be honest with you does scare a little bit at first. The Bay is a good mile wide and the Blue Hole covers for 1/3 of it. I had the best time here just riding in between the Cays:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3063977
There must be some other nice places to ride on the East Coast but for the big majority it's all fairly rocky, like this:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3064012
If the wind instead was blowing from S or even SE I reckon there is an infinity of ridable places on the West Coast. Starding with Thomson Bay (off Salt Pond), it's where the annual Regatta is usually held or Millers Bay, Mangrove Bush or even Gordon Beach.
Let me know if anyone is ever interested in going to Long Island, I have a map and I've signed all the dirt roads that lead to all the ridable beaches.
m