Bahamas Bound, Part V—Pigging Out

Beverages aside, powerboat raft-ups are all about the on-board snacks, the view and the socializing. If you could ask the locals of Pig Beach on Meek’s Patch in the Bahamas, they’d surely agree. But that would be a neat trick given the language barrier between pigs and humans. The swine-handlers of Pig Beach on Meeks Patch communicate with the animals better than most folks do and they manage their money-making animals well.

But they still don’t speak pig.

The locals of Pig Beach thrive as much on attention—and they get plenty of it from visitors to Meek’s Patch—as they do being hand-fed. Photos by Jackie Jones courtesy/copyright of the Florida Powerboat Club.

Meeks Patch and its small stretch of sand dubbed Pigs Beach land just north Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. As it was yesterday for 12 boats in the Florida Powerboat Club’s 34th annual Bahamas Poker Run, it is a popular stop. The beach and water are breathtaking, and for a small fee the handlers will let the pigs eat out of your hands.

 Pig Beach is just five minutes from Wreckers Bar in Spanish Wells, which was yesterday’s lunch stop for the Florida Powerboat Club group. After lunch, the fleet ran to Harbour Island. It is the final destination in the seven-day Bahamian adventure.

The view from Pig Beach is spellbinding.

No one put more gumption into getting here than Mark Grieser of the St. Clair, Mich., area, and his family. They made the 200-plus-mile trip in a Sunsation 32 CCX center console. It is the smallest boat in what began as a 16-vessel fleet. Running their 32-footer, Grieser and his crew had to handle the same Atlantic Ocean crossing from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Bimini in 3- to 5-foot seas and from Bimini to Nassau in 5- to 7-seven foot seas that Chris Richards and the Angle of Attack Marine crew had to handle in their 42-foot Mystic Powerboats center console.

The sign says it all.

As he said during the North Beach raft-up on Bimini, Grieser still plans to buy a bigger boat of the cruiser kind. But that plan was in play long before he and his guests accomplished a significant ocean journey in a twin-outboard center console.

“I’ve got to hand it to the Sunsation—it’s a great boat,” he said and grinned. “It got us here. We took our time and it got us here.”

After a late morning visit Pig Beach, Ohio’s Joe and Jen Greulich (left) were ready to feed themselves in Spanish Wells.

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