Thick emerald waves broke over a quarter-mile-long sandbar, blocking our way. A few hundred yards east, whitecaps crashed across Exuma Sound — a 6,000-foot-deep abyss of rolling swells and powerful trade winds that would likely flip our tiny sailboats. Beyond the sandbar, we could see the tranquil flats of the Exuma Bank and the protected beach where we hoped to camp the first night of the trip. We just had to get around the bar before dark.

A shadow flashed under the hull — a four-foot-wide stingray searching for food in the ebbing tide. Two needlefish jetted from the water and nearly landed in the cockpit. The water was so clear, it was like looking through a glass-bottom boat at coral heads, patches of sea grass and conchs passing by on the ocean floor.

Zach Tucker sailed the second boat in our armada alongside. He was relatively new to sailing but had proved a natural at the helm. We each carried three friends from Brooklyn, along with enough food, water and rum to last a week in the Bahamas’ Exuma Islands. This was my second trip through the islands on the 21-foot “expedition sailboats” that Out Island Explorers rents from its base on Great Exuma Island. After searching for a Bahamas vacation free from the confines of a cruise ship, all-inclusive resort or even traditional sailboat charter — where the staff goes to great lengths to shield guests from the raw natural beauty of the islands — I’d found Out Island’s sail-camping journeys and set out to explore the Caribbean-pine fringed cays, deserted beaches, backwater fishing villages and pristine coral reefs of the Exumas.