Adventures on Beannacht

Wednesday 25th February

 

A few days in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas on the island of New Providence. Two thirds of the Bahamian population live on the island, and guide books advise that whilst it’s worth a stop, it has a fairly high crime rate and cruisers should be cautious when at anchor or walking through the city at night. Kel and I struggle with that kind of advice, not wanting to become so defensive that we actually miss out really positive interactions with locals, of which we’ve had a few already.

Our anchorage is just on the south shore of Paradise Island, which has little apart from mammoth tourist hotels and a casino. We chose the north side of the harbour channel because the winds are due from the northeast through to Friday and we thought it would give us some extra protection. What we didn’t envisage was afternoon visits from the “Booze & Cruise” that motors past every afternoon pumping out its own blend of local music and inane MC chatter. Yesterday’s was “let me hear you scream if you’re here to celebrate your honeymoon…or an anniversary…or your divorce…or if you’re here just to celebrate life…” It’s probably more inspirational when you’re pissed.

We had a stroll downtown in the old section on Sunday and climbed up Bennet’s hill to the water tower and fort overlooking the bay and across to Paradise Island. The fort was built by the British in the 17^th century to defend the port. On the way down we walked through the Queen’s staircase which was an amazing tropical ravine in the middle of this otherwise urban city.

 

Lest we feel homesick, at least for North America, there’s one of every fast food chain you can think of in Nassau, catering to the cruise ships that dock here, and the cruisers looking for internet access. We stumbled upon a really good local tiki bar that has free wifi and a fairly secure dinghy dock where we can lock the boat up for a few hours and head ashore. Well it’s free wifi if you don’t mind paying $5 for a bottle of beer or $6.0 for a rum cocktail, twist my rubber arm.

   

We managed another little unforeseen dinghy adventure today too – we left the boat tied up at the only other safe dinghy dock on near our anchorage, just beside a Texaco station. We arrived at mid tide and on our return discovered that in the 3 hours we’d been away the rise in water level had trapped the dinghy below the pier with the outboard firmly embedded on the underside of the boardwalk. A little laughter followed by some inverted squat thrusts and we managed to squeeze the outboard clear. We had visions of needing to take off the motor and try to hold out of the water while we extracted the dinghy – West Palm was fresh in our mind!

Today we’re off to Paradise Island to see whether we can sneak in from the public beach for a walk round the aquarium and their planted grounds. We would even be a bit partial to the swimming pool if we could swing that one… we’ll see.

The plan is to leave on Friday for Allan’s Cay in the Exumas. Apparently some of clearest water and best marine life in the world. We’ll spend 2-3 weeks working our way down the Cays before heading south to the Dominican Republic.