STORY

Monty and Sara Lewis have cruised The Bahamas since 1984. Their first full-season of living aboard and exploring for longer periods brought a desire to travel beyond the well-cruised waters of the typical destination to George Town. Before GPS and other amazing electronic wonders of the 21st century, they sat down with local fishermen and salty cruising sailors, tracing vague routes on tissue paper and listening to stories of adventuresome travel to the Ragged Islands and the Bight of Acklins. With the help of topographical maps from a British aerial survey in the 1960s and always a shoal-draft sailboat, trawler or powerboat, Monty registered the land properly and began making hydrographic soundings on a grid. Those first hand-drawn Explorer charts eventually translated into digital versions that are the basis now for the entire Explorer chartbook series of 238 charts of original data. It was a labor of love and passion amid such pristine beauty that opened up The Bahamas as a cruising ground to a very special group of sea-lovers--You, The Bahamas Cruiser.