Nassau New Providence Island Bahamas

We had a busy couple of days in Nassau.  We left Bottom Harbour on Rose Island at about 0800 on Sunday 24 March and felt our way out cautiously (hence no photos).  The rising wind and increasing cloud made it difficult to read the water and there are plenty of rocks/coral heads marked on our charts between Rose Island and the eastern entrance to Nassau harbour.  So many in fact that it felt rather like we were playing a game of join the dots – what shapes could we draw with our chartplotter’s ‘snail trail’?

The eastern entrance to Nassau. On the Paradise Island side there are lots of big houses and some very impressive private docks too

Overtaken by one of the local fast ferries

The eastern entrance to Nassau harbour is shallow and all vessels are required to call on entry and exit.  The lady who answered our radio call wanted to know where we had come from and details of our cruising permit and the people on board but we had no restrictions on our entry, presumably because we weren’t going to pass under the bridges to the deep water part of the harbour where the cruise liners and commercial shipping go.

Nassau ahead

We had intended to refuel at Nassau Harbour Club Marina, where we had a berth reserved for 2 nights, but the fuel dock was occupied by an enormous superyacht so we took fuel at the Rubis fuel dock close by.  When we returned to the marina, the tide had started to run from east to west and we had been allocated a berth on the eastern side of the eastern dock.  Making the approach downtide and downwind was likely to be interesting so we asked for a berth on the other side of the dock so that we could make an into tide approach.  The answer came back that they were full – there would be marina staff to assist.  So, I lined up BV and Nicky prepared all the lines and fenders (including a decent sized roving fender) and we gave it a go…….. and it worked – but it would have been very difficult without the dockhand who took our spring and surged BV to a gentle stop in the ‘slip’ (‘berth’ to British readers).  Nicky can be quick at jumping ashore and getting lines on but I had no steerage way in the final stages of the approach so getting her close enough to get ashore would have been very tricky.  Had there not been help ashore we would have waited for the tide to change and, probably, for the wind to drop too.

Top: BV snug in her ‘slip’ at Nassau Harbour Club Marina. Bottom: Looking down the eastern dock to the club (hotel) ashore

The club pool, which is open to marina guests too

With BV snug in her berth and the formalities complete at the marina office, we headed ashore to check out the lie of the land.  We had a lot of food shopping to do and conveniently there is a good supermarket in the mall directly opposite the marina entrance, so we did several runs there over the couple of days we were in port.  Nicky also carried out a mammoth laundry run at the marina’s laundry whilst I patched some holes that we had seen the previous day on the generator exhaust water separator.

Generator exhaust water separator. Holes and weak spots filled with epoxy and then covered with Duck tape; our last repair on this one which will hopefully keep us going until we can geat a new one made in the summer

This rectangular metal device fits very exactly in a space on one of the walls of the machinery space.  The exhaust gases and water from the generator are ejected into it and the 2 are separated so that the exhaust gases are vented overboard above sea level and the water is pushed out underwater.  It makes the exhaust much quieter than if both are ejected together but, over years of use, the corrosive gas/liquid mix has resulted in pinprick holes (and therefore leaks) in the welds of the separator. We had ours re-welded in the Cape Verde Islands to fix the pin holes then but this time that wasn’t really an option so I patched these with an epoxy filler suitable for use on metal and at high temperatures but the long-term answer is a replacement. Unfortunately, since the standard exhaust separators available on the market (Geko Power seems to have stopped trading) don’t fit the space available in BV, it looks as if we’ll have to get a bespoke item made, probably when we are up in Deltaville.

Fort Montague.  Sadly it closed for the day just as we arrived so we didn’t get to look inside

It wasn’t all work though.  We took a couple of hours to wander up the road to Fort Montague park…

…where we enjoyed views over the harbour…

 

The iconic Atlantis Royal Towers hotel on Paradise Island

…and across to Paradise Island.

And, of course, when Nici and Strevs arrived on the Monday evening, all work stopped (to be honest we had completed pretty much all the jobs we had planned to attack).  We celebrated their arrival with a couple of beers at the Poop Deck restaurant, though we couldn’t have seats on the balcony because we weren’t dining.  Over dinner on BV we talked through our plan for the next day and the rest of the holiday. We had a prompt start the next day planned so that we could get across the Great Bahama Bank to the Exumas in good time to properly enjoy our first afternoon and evening anchored off an isolated cay.

BV at Nassau Harbour Club Marina

Nassau, New Providence Island, Bahamas