Rose Island

We’re playing catch-up again because we have had no internet access for over a week. So here goes.

Our first stop out from Nassau was everything Nassau wasn’t: isolated, quiet, pretty, and great snorkeling. Rose Island is a long, skinny island, and the western end is quite close to Nassau; day-trip boats bring snorkelers here. We anchored for a couple of days down at the eastern end, and were the only ones here. The shore of this island, and most of the islands we’ve been visiting, consists of rocky overhangs, with patches of sandy beach in protected areas. It makes for great snorkeling along the wall. In this picture, you can see Chris relaxing after we snorkeled, and the rocky shoreline in the distance. He caught this nice fish here on one of the reefs, which we happily ate for a couple of dinners.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY: The image I tried to upload wouldn't load, so I'll try it again later.

Paradise Island – The Anti-Nassau

Fact: Paradise Island’s original name is Hog Island, but who wants to say they’re going to Hog Island for an expensive vacation? Twenty miles from Nassau you can see the Atlantis Resort, shown here up close. It’s an intriguing structure. See the bridge between the two buildings? That’s the Presidential Suite, which, according to a city guide, goes for $25,000 per night, four night minimum. We were anchored along the Paradise Island residential shore, just off of this lovely little vacation home with its modest 50+ foot motor yacht at the dock. What really caught my eye was just to the right of this home. Lush green vegetation spilled down the hill to the water, and atop the hill was what looked like a Greek temple. I found out later that it’s called The Cloister, and is a popular wedding site. No wonder – it was absolutely enchanting! We didn't go ashore at Paradise Island, but from what we can see, it's pretty far removed from the rather gritty environment on the Nassau side of the bridge. We saw numerous limos on our walk, probably coming from the airport, and they all seemed intent bypassing Nassau proper and on crossing over to Paradise.

Nassau, Bahamas

We tend to prefer quiet, low-key anchorages, with lots of nature and not lots of development. Well, that’s not Nassau. However, we needed to pick up some fresh food and fuel, and Chris needed a part for the refrigeration, so we stopped here for a few days. We anchored near the east end of the harbor, which is actually the strip of water that runs between two islands. The harbor is bordered on the south by New Providence Island, where Nassau itself is, and on the north by Paradise Island, which is the playground of the rich and richer, but we’ll get to that in our next blog. We walked all over the place to complete our chores, then took a day to explore. Nassau hosts huge cruise ships – five were in port yesterday – and the thousands of tourists from the ships create quite a jam in the downtown area. British influence is prevalent in Nassau, with a statue of Queen Victoria outside the Parliament building (above; this style of architecture was typical of many of the buildings). However, the subtropical flora also exerted its influence on the architecture; I loved this stranger fig tree growing down the wall.

Despite the density of cruise-ship tourists in town, we managed to avoid the Hard Rock Café and fast-food places in favor of this little hut, which we found down an alley byfollowing the delicious curry aroma. We had a great lunch of conch fritters, curried mutton, rice, cole slaw, and corn, along with a couple of beers, for less than $20, which around here is quite a feat, given the expensive prices in Nassau.

Incredible, Illuminated Sand Spots

I mentioned in a previous blog that we try to anchor in sand patches; the holding is best there, and it minimizes our impact on the sea grass and corals. During the day, sand patches are easy to see because they show up bright blue against darker sea grass meadows. Deep sand is somewhat harder to distinguish than shallow sand underlaying with hard pan (rock), but it’s doable. Anyway, when we entered the anchorage at Frazer’s Hog Cay the other night, it was dark, with no shore-side lights nearby and no moon, only lots of stars. We intended to use the Q-beam to find sand patches, but figured it was going to be a difficult task, going back and forth so see what substrate was below us. But lo and behold, when we looked out over the dark water, we could actually SEE the sand patches gleaming in the starlight. Wow! We couldn’t get a picture of the sand hole at night, but here’s a picture of the contrast between the sand hole and the surrounding sea grass the next morning.

Crossing the Great Bahama Bank and Frazer’s Hog Cay

We had great conditions for crossing the bank: sunny, warm, and a nice breeze out of the south. We sailed at least half of the day, and reached six knots of speed under sails only! We had 4-18 feet of water under the keel all day, mostly deeper, but since the breeze was kicking up, the water was not as clear as it has been. The most interesting part was that we saw only four boats all day – there was NOTHING out there. You can’t see land, you can’t see other boats, and no one is talking on the radio – kind of like a little sailing purgatory. We reached the east side of the bank at dusk and continued on to Frazer’s Hog Cay, about another 15 miles. We entered the anchorage in the dark, and thanked goodness once again for our radar. It was so dark you couldn’t see the point that lead into the anchorage, but between the radar and Anne on the bow with a Q-beam (spot light), we had no problem. It was rather daunting to see the point the next day (picture at left), as it is rocky and not very forgiving. But we exercise extreme caution when we have conditions like this (and at all other times, too), so MOM, DON’T WORRY! All in all, it was a nice little anchorage (as long as you can find a sand hole to drop your anchor in, see Chris readying to haul anchor below) and it held us safe so we could sleep, which we appreciated. NOTE: We saw no hogs on Frazer's Hog Cay.

With Apologies to Honeymoon Harbour

We’ve now stayed at this anchorage twice, and I realized that I hadn’t posted a picture of it, and it really deserves recognition. This is a small anchorage at the base of a long U-shaped area bordered by small rocky islets on the east and west, and Gun Cay on the south. In fact, this was where Chris caught his spiny lobster (his first self-caught lobster), so it holds a special place in his heart (and stomach). Here are a couple of pictures that I hope do it justice.

Bounty from the Sea

A fishing boat (seen in this poor picture) shared our anchorage at South Cat Cay for a couple of days, and boy, was that advantageous for us! They came over to ask if we liked fish, which we affirmed. We then watched them pull their fish traps, and they brought us back four yellow-tail snappers, so fresh they were still alive. We gave them what was left of our Nassau dark rum, about a third of a bottle, so everyone was happy. Actually, Chris really liked that rum, but he wanted fresh fish more. He marinated and sautéed them and I made some ginger slaw (cole slaw with fresh ginger in it), and we had a couple of grand meals. Then, on Chris’ birthday (November 10^th, the same as Anne's mother’s: Happy Birthday, Mom!), he gave himself a present by catching a tasty spiny lobster (with a seven-inch tail, plenty large to be of legal size, which is 5 ½ inches), which we had for lunch with rice salad. Pretty cool to be able to catch your dinner and cook it up ten minutes later!