We're in the city of Nassau on New Providence Island. Nassau is the capitol of the Bahamas, and the island's most populace city. We're staying at Nassau Harbour Club Marina for 4 nights waiting on Amy and Ethan to arrive by plane on Wenesday, December 21. What a different atmosphere from our last anchorages in the Berry Islands where we were from Monday, December 12 until this morning!

We left the Grand Bahama Yacht Club on Grand Bahama Island at dawn on Monday buddy boating with another sailboat we met at the marina. They took the lead out of the Bell Channel, but before they were a mile out, they called us on the VHF to tell us of their plans to bail. They have two young kids aboard, and the seas were bigger than their captain thought they could handle. We decided to go ahead.
I'm glad that we did; however, Claire was seasick almost the whole 6 hour sail, and Mark even felt queasy for a little while. I didn't get seasick, but I was worn out from the rough conditions and helping Claire.

I unstowed our Christmas tree first thing after arriving at our anchorage in Bullocks Harbour off of Great Harbour Cay, Berry Islands. The next morning, a dinghy pulled up along side Nancy Lu carrying Wes and Sheryl from the sailboat, Merlin, which was anchored in front of us.
They invited us over to join them and Bill and Lauri from the sailboat Manana also anchored in Bullocks Harbour for cocktails at 5:00 that evening (we're learning that we need to keep a supply of sodas to take with us to cockpit cocktail parties since we don't drink alcohol).
We saw Wes and Sheryl again that morning at the place in front of the docked cargo ship where we tied up our dinghy to go visit the town of Bullocks Harbour Settlement. They were going to kayak in a cove, while we were on a mission to have lunch and find Wifi! Lunch was at CoolieMae's.
It is a regular restaurant; although, at both of our experiences eating there for lunch, the waitress just told us what they had ready and that's what we ordered--no menu. The first day, it was yummy porkchops with two typical Bahamian side dishes, rice and peas (more like rice and beans) and fried plantains (like fried bananas except more tart). The next time we ate at CoolieMae's, there were two dishes to choose from. Claire had Bahamian stew and Mark and I had roasted turkey with the same sides from last time. Both days were delicious. I felt a little like we were just showing up at the town's best cook's house and seeing what she had prepared that she could share with us! To get to the restaurant, you walk up a long dirt driveway and around to the back porch, which faces the sea. Of course, we ate on the porch because Timmy was with us as usual. Mark stuck his head in the screen door to ask if they were open for lunch (it wasn't obvious if they were or not). That's when they told us what was available. The second time we ate at CoolieMae's, he had to holler "Hellooo!" when he stuck his head in so they would know we were there as there was no one in the dining room.
As we left the restaurant on our first visit, I noticed the chicken coupe with the rooster that I heard crowing every morning from our anchorage. No one else was there either time that we were, but cars with Berry Island license plates would show up regularly. Someone from the car would go in to the building, chat a little while and then emerge styrofoam containers of take out.

The second part of our mission after lunch was to find WiFi.
We had passed the town's school for all ages on our way to CoolieMae's. There was a lot of activity there with children hanging around.
Our little friend magnet, Timmy, received a lot of attention from those kids of all ages who were there even though it was Christmas break. They were trying to find out their semester grades from their teachers who were getting the grades ready for report card day on the 15th. After lunch, Mark asked if the school had WiFi.
They did, and one of the young teachers tried to help Mark use the school's WiFi, but they couldn't get it to work.
As they worked on it inside, Claire and I sat on the steps, and talked with the kids and other teachers as they petted Timmy. Since it didn't work out with the WiFi at the school, we dinghied over to the marina to see if we could use theirs.
As it turned out, we didn't even have to go into the marina office because Mark picked up someone's Wifi just drifting around in our dingy. Claire amused herself by looking into the water through our handy clear-bottomed bucket (used for checking to see if the anchor is set in case you don't want to dive in the water) while Mark accessed our email while puttering around.

The next day, we decided to combine lunch and a WiFi search again.
This time we dinghied to the marina, but couldn't pick up that same signal. We tied up at the dock, and set out walking to a hamburger joint with a beautiful view of the beach and the ocean beyond on the other side of the island that Wes had told us about. As a bonus, the restaurant is located across the street from the little airport, which has WiFi.
WOW! Beautiful was an understatement!! Claire and I played on the beach while we waited on our burgers. It's a good thing there was a water faucet at the restaurant to rinse our feet off afterwards. I've never seen so many colors of blue in one place in nature! So far, that is the most gorgeous ocean view I have EVER seen!
After lunch, we walked over to the airport, and used the WiFi from a shady place outside. Claire made a little friend, but this time it wasn't Timmy that attracted her.
We had to tie poor Timmy up while 4 year old Kayla, who is afraid of dogs, played Angry Birds on our ipad, took pictures with Claire's camera (including silly face one's with Claire), and sat in Claire's lap while video chatting with Claire's friend, Kay, on Skype! We finally tore ourselves and Claire's camera away and started the LONG walk back. I never did see Kayla's mother. I'm sure she was around somewhere. I think I heard her calling as we left. When we got back to the dock, the tide was out and the water was down about 5 feet. It was quite a trick lowering ourselves down into the dinghy. It's a good thing we had left plenty of dinghy line out, or it would have been hanging from the dock. I'm sure that the amount of line we let out was no accident...Captain Mark has a way of thinking of things like tides and such.


That night, we were off to Manana for another cockpit party! This time, all of the boats in the anchorage were invited...Six boats total plus Michael, a captain on a boat in the marina! Three Canadian boats had arrived the day before. After that party, Claire mentioned that it was worth living on Nancy Lu for 9 months to meet so many interesting people.

The next day, my mission was to fulfill my fantasy of giving away friendship bracelets that I've made to children on the beaches of the Bahamas. Well, it wasn't on the beaches, but there were plenty of children who I knew were receiving their report card at the school that day in town! I thought my little gift could either be a congratulations gift for doing well or a token of consolation if they hadn't done so well! I was able to give four bracelets away.
I first gave one to Gabriella whose mother works at CoolieMae's. She's in grade 1 as they say it. On the way back to the dinghy from a little grocery store (where all of the workers were sitting around eating from familiar looking styrofoam containers), we saw three other kids from the school the other day.
Thanks to Timmy, they came over to us, and we were able to talk with them and offer our gifts! What fun for me!!

I was sad to leave this friendly town; I would have liked to attend their church on Sunday. We had to get going; however, to our next anchorage in the Berry Islands before sailing on to Nassau.

We set sail Saturday morning for Devil's-Hoffman anchorage between Devil's and Hoffman Cays (Cays, pronounced Keys, are very small islands). It was an easy 6 hour sail, but put us that much closer to Nassau. Our plan was to stay there until Tuesday, and then sail 8 hours over to Nassau to be ready to pick Amy and Ethan up on Wednesday.
Well, our time at this secluded, peaceful, star-filled, private, pristine, BEAUTIFUL (I could go on with the adjectives) anchorage had to be cut short because of the forecast for strong winds in the wrong direction starting Sunday evening. We were thankful for our wonderful two nights there, though! We read in our cruising guide about a blue hole that is on Hoffman Cay. A blue hole is a body of water, usually right in the middle of the surrounding ocean that is literally unfathomable. It is so deep that instruments are unable to measure it! From an ariel view it looks like a huge dark blue circle surrounded by lighter blue. We were excited to take a dinghy ride to the beach and then hike to this unique blue hole surrounded by land.
It did not disappoint!! After working up the courage, we swam in it.
Claire and I swam all the way to the other side. The neatest part, to me, was what looked like a lasar light show as the sunrays penetrated through the water. Unexpected to me, the rays came to a point down deep in the blue water which made it look like they were coming from the depths and radiating out...at least that's what it looked like to me--FREAKY, yet beautiful! That night as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep in preparation for our dawn departure, I glanced out my open window to see a star-filled sky. I tried to just lie there and close my eyes because I really was tired, and it is a pain to crawl over a sleeping Mark to get out of my tall berth. I felt almost guilty about passing up the opportunity to witness such a sight so I went up on deck and gazed for a while at some of the brightest stars I've ever seen thanks to the fact that the moon had not yet risen. I'm thankful that I got up!

Well, we've docked in Nassau after an easy sail. The winds really picked up as forecasted after we were safely docked. The entrance to Nassau Harbour is riddled with coral heads, but thanks to Peter's waypoints we made it in with no problem. That was the case with the beautiful Devil's-Hoffman anchorage, as well. We learned from a VHF communication with our friends on Merlin, who left a couple of hours before us, that they passed this anchorage up because of the formidable breakers that they saw the waves crashing against in the entrance. We probably would have too, except we had Peter's waypoints and the assurance that he'd done it with his family many times on Adelaide.

I plan to do some grocery shopping, boat cleaning and laundry in preparation for our much-anticipated visit with the kids for Christmas. It's getting harder and harder to remember that it's the holidays. I've been reading in Luke lately, but I'm at Christ's resurrection instead of Christ's birth! There were certainly no Christmas decorations on Hoffman's Cay, and the only sign of Christmas in Bullocks Harbour Settlement was some garland wrapped around the posts of the porch outside of CoolieMae's. With all of the activities going on, we haven't listened to much Christmas music or watched Christmas DVDs lately. We certainly haven't done any Christmas shopping! I DO still put our little Christmas tree out first thing when we arrive at our new anchorage or dock, and I'm finding it easier to remember to celebrate God's mercy towards us EVERYDAY!!

Lots more pictures in the photo gallery!!