If you live on Long Island, you already know July does not look like the brochure. The Salt Pond regatta banners are down. The Cape Santa Maria parking loop is quiet by mid-morning. Half the flights into Deadman's Cay are one-third full.
And yet this is the month the island is arguably at its most itself. The tourists thin out, the water goes glass-flat by dawn, and Dean's Blue Hole fills with the only crowd Long Island ever hosts on purpose: a small international field of freedivers who train year-round for ten days here.
This post is not a round-up. It is one argument: the July calendar on Long Island is built around a single event that most residents drive past without stopping, and the handful of kitchens and guides that stay open through it are the ones worth knowing by name for the rest of the year.
The one thing on the calendar
Vertical Blue is an invite-only elite freediving competition held in the Bahamas at Dean's Blue Hole by freediving world record holder William Trubridge. It is not a spectator festival in the regatta sense. There is no stage, no bar tent, no gate. There is a floating platform, a line dropping into the dark, and a rope of divers waiting their turn.
What makes it worth walking down to the beach for is scale. Dean's Blue Hole sits in a bay west of Clarence Town, and at 202 metres it is the world's third deepest blue hole after Taam Ja' in Chetumal Bay and Dragon Hole in the South China Sea. It is enclosed on three sides by a natural rock amphitheatre and on the fourth by a turquoise lagoon and powder-white beach, swell and wind do not reach inside the hole, and visibility usually runs between 10 and 30 metres. That is why the world records happen here and not somewhere with a better airport.
The competition is producing real numbers. In July 2025, Walid Boudhiaf set a new Tunisian national record of 118 m at Vertical Blue 2025, in a field of roughly 20 divers that included Trubridge, Alenka Artnik, Alice Modolo, Arnaud Jerald and Filippo Carletti. If you show up mid-morning on a competition day, you will watch someone quietly try to break a national record from their home country, then swim back to the platform and get on with lunch.
A practical note for residents: the platform stays in place during the competition window, which changes the photograph most visitors want. If you have out-of-town family flying in this month and Dean's Blue Hole is on the agenda, the empty-lagoon shot is easier before or after the competition dates.
For anyone who wants to try it rather than watch, the Vertical Blue Master Class is offered only once per year and combines instruction from Trubridge with a special guest instructor, normally another world champion or a world expert in a related field. The school's three course options list from roughly USD 800 up to USD 1,500, which is a reasonable frame of reference against what a comparable technical course would run in Roatán or Dahab.
Where locals actually eat in July
The season-versus-off-season split on Long Island is sharper than on most Family Islands. In February, half of Salt Pond and Clarence Town is booked out. In July, the working list of open kitchens shrinks to something you can hold in your head.
Here is that list, with the detail that matters if you have not been in a while:
- Stella Maris Resort Clubhouse and Moonshine Beach Bar & Grill. Restaurant, bar, and delivery from the Clubhouse, plus the Atlantic-shore Moonshine Beach Bar & Grill for lighter bar food. Longtime regulars point to grouper and the tuna poke bowl.
- Chez Pierre, Thompson's Bay. Still the destination dinner on the west shore. Reservation-first, especially mid-week.
- Max's Conch Bar, Deadman's Cay. On the local forums, Gary at Max's is repeatedly named as making the best conch salad on the island, with Adderley Boys in Burnt Ground as the close runner-up.
- Rowdy Boys at Winter Haven Resort, Clarence Town. The closest sit-down to Dean's Blue Hole if you are coming off a Vertical Blue afternoon.
- Aggie's (Agnes's Snacks and Drinks) in Glinton's for local plates and burgers, with the standing forum advice to call ahead for any group of four or more.
- Triple D's, also Glinton's, for a local take on Chinese takeaway, open Friday through Sunday only.
- Rodney's Sunset Bar and Grill in Seymour's and Pratt's Native Restaurant in Burnt Ground for the north end.
The reason to name them individually rather than say "there are places to eat" is that in July the calling-ahead question is not optional. One recent guest reported trying to buy a loaf of bread on the Independence Day holiday weekend and finding the local store already sold out, until Jill at Stella Maris offered to bake them one. That is the July supply chain in one anecdote. Order the fish the day before. Confirm the takeaway before you get in the car.
The beach math no one prints
Cape Santa Maria and the Stella Maris rock pools get most of the photography. In July they are almost empty by 10 a.m., which is the reversal residents already know.
The less-obvious pairing is the beach directly north of Dean's Blue Hole. Long-time visitors have flagged that the sand next to Dean's collects plastic drifting up from farther south, while Turtle Cove Beach, three minutes north of Dean's Blue Hole, is a cleaner Atlantic-side option with about three parking spots. If you have friends staying near Clarence Town this month, that is the swim to send them to, not the one at Dean's itself.
The other useful pairing is east versus west. On the western shore you find calm, quiet white-sand beaches including Cape Santa Maria, while the eastern Atlantic shore at Stella Maris shows pink sand contrasting with wild Atlantic water, with natural pools dotting the coast. In July the trade winds usually run east-southeast, which means the west shore is the swimming shore and the east is where you go for wave sound and the rock pools, not for a long swim.
For visitors who want a landmark rather than a swim, the two similar twin-towered churches in Clarence Town, both credited to Father Jerome Hawes, are worth the stop: St. Paul's Church was built when he was an Anglican priest, and St. Peter and St. Paul's Church was designed after he became Roman Catholic. They photograph better in the flatter light after 4 p.m.
The regatta is over. The next one is closer than you think.
The June regatta is done for the year. The Long Island Regatta at Salt Pond is the second largest in The Bahamas after the National Family Island Regatta in the Exumas, with skippers competing for cash prizes and trophies in A, B and C class races, and some of the sloops built right on the island in the settlement of Mangrove Bush. If you missed it this year, the notable calendar item to have on your fridge is that Vertical Blue is essentially the July replacement, and then the island goes quiet again until the winter mini-regatta cycle.
Two mainland-of-Bahamas anchors bracket that quiet stretch and are worth noting for anyone whose family flies in and out around events: the National Family Island Regatta in Exuma is scheduled for April 21–25, 2026, and Vertical Blue is the July counterpoint on Long Island itself.
What is shifting under the surface
The reason July matters more than it used to is that Long Island is quietly on the list for a piece of Bahamian tourism infrastructure that has not existed here before. In October 2022 the Bahamian Government signed an agreement to build a new cruise port on Long Island's southern tip, south of Clarence Town, on a 200-hectare parcel secured by Azul Destinations, with a budgeted USD 250 million project resulting in Calypso Cove Bahamas, a luxury resort and cruise ship port to be constructed and managed by a consortium of Azul Destinations and Calypso Cove Destinations. The plan also includes a 200-room boutique hotel, an 18-hole golf course, a casino, a waterpark, dining, retail, nature trails, and a premium marina able to berth mega-yachts. Related plans call for improvements to Deadman's Cay Airport, which currently serves Bahamasair and Southern Air Charter on domestic routes linking Stella Maris, Nassau and San Salvador.
Whatever residents think of that project, the practical read for the next couple of Julys is that this is the version of Long Island that still has empty beaches at Cape Santa Maria on a Wednesday. Enjoy it accordingly.
The take-home
If you are on Long Island this July, do three things. Drive down to Dean's Blue Hole once on a competition day and stand on the ridge rather than the sand. Call your dinner in the day before you want it. And use the shoulder month to swim the beaches you skip when the island is full.
If you own a home here or are thinking about how the next few years reshape ownership on the south end of the island, The Agency Bahamas works across Long Island and the wider Family Islands and follows this market closely. Contact the team now!
