Ahoy from Nassau on the island of New Providence!
It's a beautiful morning here with a temperature of about 70 degrees and all that you can hear are sea birds crying to one another. That wasn't the case at about 3:30 this morning when the winds died and all of the boats in the anchorage were treated to the soothing voice of a Reggae singer booming over the waters. Luckily by 4:00 he either ended his performance or the winds picked up again...I could still hear music at that time, but I was able to get back to sleep.
Most people think that Nassau is the name of the island, but it's the name of a city on New Providence island. New Providence is a good sized island and is about 17 miles long by 7 miles wide. Nassau is the capital of the Bahamas is definitely the center of commerce. You can get just about anything that you want here (that is except for the polarizing filter for my camera that I left at home or a memory module to replace the one that went bad on my laptop.) Their are US style/sized grocery stores and several well stocked marine stores. If you are looking for shops to pick up trinkets for the folks at home, you've definitely come to the right place as this is cruise ship heaven. Yesterday there were six cruise ships here.
For a while I was doubting that we would made it here as the winds had been howling out of the E since we arrived in Bimini. On Wednesday the winds were forecast to subside for a couple of days and we started the 120 NM jump to Nassau. The forecast was for 10-15 Kts out of the ENE and instead we had 15-20 with gusts into the mid 20s. It was a bumpy ride with us bashing almost directly into 3 to 5 foot seas. We were traveling with BJ and Diane from S/V Unicorn and I got some good video of them motor-sailing along and I got some good video of them motor-sailing along..
Our plan was to leave Bimini at noon and we'd arrive in Nassau at about noon the following day. Low tide was at noon, so we pushed our departure out to 1 PM and we just barely made it over the sand bar at the entrance to the marina. BJ and Diane have a wonderful dog named Bud and asking a dog to wait 24 hours between shore breaks is asking a lot. After studying the charts I realized that we could anchor near Chub Cay in the Berry islands in the dark, which would allow Bud his shore leave. Now please don't ask me why I didn't have this revelation the day before so we could have left at 7 AM instead of 1 PM! At about 3 AM we dropped our anchor and we headed out at 8 AM the morning. Bud was very grateful!
It's about 38 miles from Chub Cay to Nassau and we pretty much had the wind on the nose. We arrived in Nassau at about 3 PM and anchored just inside the harbor entrance. We spent the next day exploring Nassau by foot and yesterday was a boat project day. A plastic sewage fitting broke and I got to spend hours cleaning up that mess. Yuck! Sue and Diane hit the grocery store and did their own damage to the cruising kitty.
Today we're going to move to an anchorage E of here by Rose Island and tomorrow we're headed to the Exumas.
-- Geoff & Sue
For the cruiser:
When you enter the harbor your are required to contact Nassau Harbor Control on VHF 16 and provide them with your registration number and destination. You're also supposed to contact them before moving within the harbor.
We anchored between red 6 and 8 in a nice sand patch with good holding. It's a nice anchorage without the noise and traffic of anchorages closer to town. Unfortunately it's a LONG haul to get to town. Lots of boats were anchored just before the western most bridge, but that's supposed to be a very noisy anchorage. Other boats were anchored near the Nassau Yacht Club, but we were advised that that anchorage gets very rough.
We docked our dinghies at the Nassau Yacht Haven Marina after asking permission. There are 3 good marine stores very close to the marina. We also docked our dinghies at a dock behind Bristol Liquors which is located just past the Harbor View Marina. There's a "Liquor Store" sign on the water. They had competitive prices and there's a large mall just W of Bristol.
In the mall you'll find a City Market grocery store which has everything that you might want...at a price. There's also another liquor store that had better prices than Bristol. Hard liquor prices are better than the US, but wine is 25-50% more expensive.
Log ID: 943
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