TODAY, IT'S BECOMING more and more difficult to find a little sliver of paradise, or a private cove to cast a hook for the evening. Boaters may find their favorite harbor overrun with weekend sun worshippers. If you're in the mood for a little travel, however, point your bow east and head for the Bahamas.Yes Paradise Island is nice, but there is much more to do in the Out Islands. It is a sportsman's paradise, full of activities for the boater, angler, diver, and beach bum. Here we will give you a taste of the islands, with a little history sprinkled in, while providing a few navigation and procedural tips.We'll see you there. Bon Voyage.

CRUISING THE OUTISLANDS: Awkwardly, the young woman climbed down from the dock onto the bow of a 20-foot center console, a popular motor vessel among Bahamian Out Islanders. "You get in a boat like you from Nassau," the man at the helm teased.

Like most Out Islanders, the young skipper defined himself by what he was not: He was not a citified Bahamian from the nation's capital, bereft of traditional island skills and values. As his parents before him, he will someday worry that his children will be tempted away from their island home by the lure of Nassau's materialism.

Over the past 40 years, the Out Islands have seen their young people siphoned to the tourist centers of Nassau and Freeport in search of steady work. Increasingly, however, tourism has come to the less developed of the more than 700 Bahamian cays and islands. The style of this new development and the scale reflects the Out Island determination to stay true to a Bahamian ideal, while providing badly needed jobs.

For sportfisherman and cruisers, this is a good thing because Out Islanders are mariners by nature, and cannot help but share the brotherhood of the sea with us. By way of contrast, a tourist stepping off a cruise ship in Freeport is nothing more than a walking ATM machine. Big tourism is represented by big structures-the Atlantis gambling resort on Paradise Island being the most spectacular example. Tourism on the Out Islands is centered not on concrete and steel, but flesh and bone.

Bonefishing is a big draw to the Out Islands. So are the locals.

The face of Out Island tourism are the faces of people like restaurateur Lorreine on Great Guana Cay (Black Point), and dockmaster Rosie on Grand Cay (VHF call sign "Lovetrain"), innkeeper Terry Baines on Little Farmers, dockmaster Cecil Ingraham from the Abaco Beach Resort and Boat Harbour, and a host of other friendly, hardworking islanders who take care of the needs of passing mariners and other lovers of nature.

Instead of casinos, the Out Islands serve us with their rustic cottage camps, dive tours, quaint sailor bars, family-owned marinas and fish camps (complete with native guides the likes of Bonefish Willy, Bonefish Leroy and a host of others similarly titled).

Bonefish, by the way, are an inedible schooling species, highly prized by light tackle anglers. The Out Islands, particularly Andros, the Exumas and Jumento Cays, boast the finest bone- fishing flats in the world. If you prefer eating what you catch, the cays are a cornucopia of grouper, wahoo, dolphin, lobster and the gamut of tropical species. Did I mention conch? Diners are often asked to make evening reservations in the morning, specifying their orders, so the restaurant's owner can send his boys out to catch your meal during the day.

If you happen to be on Great Guana, Morgan's Bluff or George Town during their individual regatta weeks, you will witness an unforgettable spectacle, the Bahamian answer to NASCAR. Extreme racing sloops thunder around a marked course, often colliding at the turns, oversized sails ready to burst while the boat is prevented from capsizing by a gaggle of crewmen (and women) clinging tenuously outboard as ballast. Shoreside, spectators wager on their favorites while savoring the full range of Bahamian cuisine prepared by outdoor vendors. The rum flows and bottles of Kalik beer are emptied as Out Islanders celebrate their heritage from the days of the working sail.

As cruise ship lines, condo developers and eastern European "businessmen" race to snatch up ever more remote Bahamian cays, there are still some Out Island locales that resist their entreaties or that are just plain too far away. An example of the former is Andros "The Big Yard" with its hundreds of miles of unexplored back country, said to be inhabited by mysterious half-man, half-bird creatures called Chickcharnies. The beautiful and remote Jumento Cays represent the latter.

Imagine yourself on a sugary beach stretching as far as the eye can see. The water is aquamarine blue, but so vivid you feel like you're on another planet. Or maybe you'll be lying on that beach at night, looking skyward. The unpolluted atmosphere reveals a starscape so vivid you feel like you are floating through space itself, were it not for gentle music of the lapping waves to keep you Earthbound. Imagine that, and you?Ĵve imagined the splendor. Columbus claimed these jewels for the crown of Spain. A religious person might simply see them as jewels in the crown of God.