Nassau New Providence Island Bahamas

The Nassau Harbour Club Marina

We arrived as 4 and left as 2, the main reason for returning to Nassau being to drop off Nici and Strevs so that they could fly home.  We left Bottom Harbour on Rose Island at 0745hrs to get into Nassau early so that we could refuel and then move to Nassau Harbour Club Marina for final panic packing and disembarkation.  The grey skies, a little drizzle and reasonably brisk winds made the move much less easy than we would have liked but at least Nici and Strevs weren’t treated to tantalising views to rub their noses into the fact that they were having to leave.

However, once we were settled in Nassau, the weather improved somewhat and Nici announced that she had a treat in store for us. The early move allowed us to fit in a last lunch together at the Poop Deck Restaurant, sitting at a lovely balcony table with great views out over the moored yachts and the Atlantis Royal Towers hotel complex on Paradise Island. Somehow, we managed not to take any photos; I’m missing having my little camera which I had lost in Beaufort NC!

A photo of the Atlantis Royal Towers hotel complex on Paradise Island hotel from our last visit

Our last few hours together were spent chatting and then it was time for a bag-drag to meet the taxi.  Almost perfect timing, just 2 minutes late, their taxi arrived to take them to the airport and after heartfelt hugs and farewells it was back to just the 2 of us on board BV.

But there was no time to mope.  We need to re-victual, get some parts for fixing the generator and also book an appointment with a Barbadian solicitor. In the last couple of days we had received some e-mails about a minor boundary issue with our property back in Guernsey and needed to get some Power of Attorney paperwork notarised so that the issue could be resolved in our absence. Cue Nicky’s super efficiency: in under 24 hours she had arranged for the paperwork to be raised, booked a Barbadian solicitor (getting an appointment at that short notice was amazing!), got the signature witnessed and arranged for it all to go to the court and then be ‘Fedexed’ back to Guernsey.  Meanwhile, I bought some wire, a few clamps, a length or 2 of fuel hose and a low power 12V fuel pump.

Finding all of that was harder than I had imagined.  There are several chandleries and hardware stores close to the marina but despite a thorough search of them I failed in my quest for a low power fuel pump for the generator.  I’d found the wires and hoses for it but none of the suppliers stocked the pump that I wanted.  Fortunately, my questions were overheard by a Canadian couple; they knew exactly what I was after because they had one fitted in the supply line to the generator on their motorboat B2B.  They were on their way back home and so decided that they didn’t need 2 spare fuel pumps on board and agreed that I could buy one from them.  Fabulous!  The boating community at its best, looking out for each other!

So, with BV’s fridge busting at the seams with food, the tanks full, the admin completed and a handful of new spares on board, we slipped our lines and departed back towards Bottom Harbour on Rose Island. It’s amazing what you can achieve in a 24 hour marina stop!

Nassau, New Providence Island, Bahamas

Lobster Cay Bahamas

Dawn in the marina at Nassau.  You can see some of the wrecks in the anchorage area just sticking up at low water

‘BV Holiday Solutions’ is not for the faint hearted!  We were all up at dawn on Tuesday 26 March for an 0800hrs departure from the marina as we needed to cross the centre of the Great Bahamas Bank, the part known as the Yellow Bank, with a high sun so that we had a fighting chance for reading the water and spotting the plethora of coral heads in that shallow area.  However, with virtually no wind it was a gentle motor all the way with breakfast en routeand plenty of chatting.  At the Yellow Bank it all became a little more serious and we slowed down considerably and posted one person on the bow looking for the tell-tale dark shadows and indicating a route around them.  It was about 1100 when we got there and, though the sun was high, we were still definitely going into it.  The difference in visibility through the water when looking east and west was phenomenal.  We made it through with no problem and continued on towards Highborne Cay.

Lots of big motoryachts anchored off Highborne Cay

Highborne Cay was very busy with big motoryachts anchored relatively close to the marina but we hadn’t planned to stop there.

Instead we continued past, crossed Highborne Cut into Exuma Sound (though which the tide was flowing at a great rate of knots) and then followed a shallow channel past a couple of small islets.

Rounding the western tip of Lobster Cay – the water here was about 4m deep

The water was shallow, mostly about 3m deep and we hadn’t yet got used to spending so long in water this shallow, but the colours were fantastic.

Anchored off Lobster Cay

We anchored close south of Lobster Cay, an isolated, uninhabited cay with a couple of fabulous looking beaches on its north side.  But the wind was forecast to come from the northeast overnight so we wanted to be on the southern (rocky) side.  We anchored relatively close to a couple of good-sized coral heads, threw a long line with a fender over the stern as the tidal flow was still pretty strong here, and went snorkelling on the coral heads.  There were plenty of small colourful reef fish ……… but no lobsters!!

View across the shallows to the north of Lobster Cay towards Highborne Cay

Sundowners on the beach

Nici and Strevs (Neil)

In the late after we went in search of a suitable spot for evening cocktails.  The larger of the 2 beaches on the north side of the island was perfect and we had a great walk along it sundowners cocktails in hand. It was great to have our friends with us and to share time in these beautiful islands with them.

BV at anchor in the lee of Lobster Cay

Back on board BV we cooked up a fab barbecue for dinner, enjoying it over a lovely sunset and lots more laughter. What a wonderful day!

Lobster Cay, Bahamas

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