{"id":23252,"date":"2026-06-18T11:58:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T11:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/?p=23252"},"modified":"2026-06-18T12:21:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T12:21:55","slug":"visiting-duncan-town-ragged-island-in-ragged-islands-the-bahamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/2026\/06\/18\/visiting-duncan-town-ragged-island-in-ragged-islands-the-bahamas\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Duncan Town, Ragged Island in Ragged Islands, The Bahamas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sunrise on Tuesday, February 24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last night, there was a big storm with strong, cold wind. However, our anchorage was very protected from that direction and we had a calm night. This morning, the wind was so cold that Christi couldn\u2019t sit outside to watch the sunrise.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also this morning, Eric realized that the AGM battery shared by the wing engine and generator was starting to die. The last few times he’d started the generator, the voltage had dropped and it didn\u2019t sound right. Today, when he exercised the wing engine, it had trouble starting. Knowing that both the wing engine and the generator were having a hard time with start up, he deduced the problem was the battery. He checked the voltage and it had dropped. The battery was only four years old. Usually they last five years, but that battery didn\u2019t get discharged very often, which shortens its life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Keith and Christi finished school, we decided to walk to town to get groceries and lunch. Yesterday<\/a>, we’d noticed an airplane in the bushes a bit west of where we’d landed the dinghy, but we hadn’t investigated it. We’d read on the No Foreign Land app that it had been a restaurant, but was out of business now. Today, Christi walked over to get a better look, curious about a restaurant made out of a plane. It was actually a building with a plane built into the roof. It looked like it was once a super cool place for the cruisers to hang out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Big pieces of what was probably once a ship were scattered along the shore near the airplane-house. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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The walk to town was 1.5 miles each way. We followed the very straight dirt road <\/a>northeast for what felt like forever until we got to the tarmac. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We carefully checked to make sure there were no airplanes coming towards us before we crossed the tarmac. It was deserted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eventually, the dirt road met a perpendicular paved road that headed north. We turned onto the paved road and headed up the hill. The paved road actually went all the way to the shore, however, the beach it ended at was very rocky and wasn’t suitable to land a dinghy. It was possible to anchor the dinghy offshore and wade in, but we’d decided that we’d rather walk farther than get sopping wet. Plus, the water here was kind of icky with all the debris and other stuff that was pushed in by the tide<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the top of the hill was an interesting tower topped with a giant ball with spikes. We wondered what it was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The view of the anchorage from the top of the hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The view looking east. Apparently this was a private cemetery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And the view looking north at the town. It is kind of hard to tell from the photo, but the town was built along a shallow bay. From the distance, it looked like there was enough infrastructure to support hundreds of people. We were confused because the locals told us Duncan Town only had 75 residents (had being the operative word, it was down to 55 now<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As we got to the edge of the town, why there was such disparity between population and infrastructure became clear. Some of the buildings were beautiful and in great shape. And some looked like they’d been destroyed in a hurricane and had been left to crumble. Here were two such buildings side by side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As we walked through town, it reminded us a lot of Bahia de Tortugas in Baja<\/a>. We guess the police must have moved to another building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was the only grocery store in town. The woman who owned the store, Maxine, was the primary person who ran the annual Valentine’s Day Fundraiser.<\/a> Knowing we had a long walk back to Kosmos, we only bought non-perishable items. We’d expected the prices to be outrageous because this place was even more remote than the Exumas, but the prices here were actually better than in the Exumas<\/a>. But, like the Exumas, the selection was limited. Later, one of the cruisers said they didn’t think Maxine made much profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next to it was a bar called Jolly’s. We wandered in to see if we could get lunch, but it looked like it was mostly beverages. We were told that they sometimes serve food, but you had to make reservations in advance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Across from the store and bar was a building that was under construction. We wondered what it was. A church maybe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Finding food turned out to be a bit of a challenge. We were told to text the main restaurant in town to see if they were open today. They were not. They told us to text Erica to see if she was open today. She was. We followed the road north to where it bended around the bay and turned east. Erica’s restaurant was in a charming blue building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We walked up the ramp, which lead to a little patio where a group of tourists sat. We asked them about food. They said they were guests at the hotel and they were not sure if she served non-guests. Inside the restaurant, it was packed with locals who were hanging out with beverages. We immediately recognized Erica as one of the ladies who’d been serving food at the fundraiser<\/a>. We asked her about ordering lunch. She said she had burgers and fries handy, so we ordered three. While waiting for our food, Christi walked over to the end of the road to check out the apparently brand new building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Between Erica’s hotel\/restaurant and the new building was a small building that was marked as a utility company. A local was standing outside. Christi remembered seeing him at the fundraiser. She introduced herself and asked him what the building was. He said his name was Myron and that it was a school. It was so new that it hadn’t officially opened yet — they will still doing the finishing touches. He said that in addition to classrooms, there was also housing for the teachers onsite. It would also double as a hurricane shelter. He was a bit dismayed that they’d spent so much money to build a school when there were only seven school-aged children on the island. He said that they should have built homes to attract families or at least opened up the island so that people could come in and easily build homes for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she asked what the white building was. He said the bottom floor was going to be a medical clinic and the top floor a morgue. He again was concerned about why they needed such a big morgue for such a small population. It would also double as a hurricane shelter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that it cost $70,000 each way for a barge to tow the heavy construction equipment, so the floor price for any construction project was $140,000 before any other costs were factored in. He said that once a company had one contract, they could cut $140,000 off any subsequent contracts. Thus, the same contractor was doing the school, clinic and the upcoming government administration\/police building that has apparently not been started yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she asked about the tower with the ball. He said it was a doppler radar. Clearly, that radar hit a nerve. He said it had cost $1.5 million to build. One administration built it. A new administration had taken over by the time it was completed. The new administration decided not to turn it on, nor did the next administration. So it has been finished for about 10-years and never been turned on. It had its own generator and two rooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That led to a chat about local politics. He explained that the town had not fully recovered from Hurricane Irma, which devastated Duncan Town in 2017. He said the government didn\u2019t consult them on infrastructure projects and it was hard for the people in Duncan Town to get the politicians attention since it was such a small town. He complained that the government was very slow to pay employees\/contractors, which significantly slowed down progress. He ran the utility company, and sometimes there was such a large gap in pay that he’d stop working until they paid his back wages. But since he did utilities, he had to balance loyalty to the community, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that internet banking has revolutionized life for the people in Duncan Town. They used to have to take the supply ship<\/a> to Nassau to deposit\/withdraw funds. He told stories of taking the boat to the government offices in Nassau<\/a> to try to get them to write a paper check for his wages so he could physically carry it to the bank to deposit it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While they talked, lots and lots of goats<\/a> walked by. Myron said the goats were wild and that there were thousands of them on the island. He said the sole purpose for the fence around the school was to keep the goats out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myron was a nice guy and she enjoyed talking to him. She thanked him for all the information and headed back to the restaurant to eat. After lunch, we walked back to the dinghy. The water along the shore was now red and icky \u2013 something appeared to have been pushed in from the tide, maybe a red sea grass? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After we returned to the boat, Christi did a little more research on Duncan Town. It was settled by Loyalists who had fled after the Revolutionary War,<\/a> and they had brought their slaves with them. Most of the people on the island were direct ancestors of the original settlers. The primary industries were salt mining and fishing, and they used to do some boat building, too. The population peaked in the 1930s, but she wasn’t able to find how many people lived there at the peak. Later, another cruiser told us that the peak population was 1,000 people, which we thought was in line with the amount of infrastructure we’d seen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then salt mining production declined and fishing became less profitable. People moved to other islands with better economic opportunities. There was a hurricane in the 1950s, and it sounded like that caused some residents to permanently leave the island, too. But it didn’t sound like anyone left after Hurricane Irma. We suppose the small population who were left were committed to keeping the community alive. Oddly, an official government website<\/a> listed the current population as 210: 15 men, 65 women and 80 children. Of course, this number conflicted with the 2010 official census of 72 people in total. Maybe the school was built based on this false number of 80 children?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunrise on Tuesday, February 24 Last night, there was a big storm with strong, cold wind. However, our anchorage was very protected from that direction and we had a calm night. This morning, the wind was so cold that Christi … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[402,52,16,9,45,1,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bahamas-caribbean","category-caribbean","category-cruising-guide","category-cruising-life","category-culture","category-general","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23252"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23325,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23252\/revisions\/23325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}