Junkanoo
14 July 2011 | Nassau, Bahamas
GL/Hot
We arrived Nassau, Bahamas on the day of their celebrated independence from Britain that happened 38 years ago. Nassau is a small port but a large cruise ship destination. There is a lot of hustle and bustle and with small roads and tons of fast and erratic moving cars, it’s really no place to go walking with kids. Not to mention the crime as there were three more murders last night. We will be here for another week as we are waiting on mail from West Marine. Hopefully they come through quickly so we can continue on our voyage.
With the holiday celebration there are thousands of go fast boats moving at top speed everywhere. They seemingly just go back and forth, bottles of liquor clearly in hand, all with their throttles pushed to the kitchen. Nobody has figured out that if you trim the engines the boats won’t porpoise so wildly. It’s hilarious to watch. As I write this, a 36 foot Baja just screamed through the anchorage at 60 knots missing our sailboat by a couple of feet. There were probably 25 people on that boat. The wake threw everything in our boat to the floor. Perhaps they were better off under British rule. It’ll be a nice change once we get to the Out Islands. Power boats can’t go that far.
The treck across the Providence Channel, a 50 mile wide expanse of Atlantic Ocean in between the Bahamas Banks, was uneventful. We sailed along watching movies, reading books, playing games, and doing art. The kids do very well entertaining themselves when we are offshore. When at anchor however, they expect regular outings and adventures. We are looking at taking them to the Atlantis Resort where there is a massive aquarium you can walk under. There are also underwater hotel rooms with glass walls and ceilings. It must be incredible to sleep with sharks swimming inches from your bed. We also plan to visit the cruise ship terminal and mingle with the thousands of sun burned Americans as they shop and gawk at everything. They have an Outback Steakhouse here and we happen to have an unspent gift card for it. Something to do.
Hopefully with the holidays over, things will calm down a bit in the harbor. Once our mail arrives we will be gone the following morning to Allen Cay (pronounced key) in the Exuma chain of islands. Some of the best sailing on the planet. After visiting this place I am excited to get back out to the real Bahamas. We will island hop our way down the chain covering about 30 miles a day. Most likely we will stay a couple days here and there. Then we will hop off into the trade winds and the wild, unruly ocean as we beat south to Luperon, Dominica Republic where we will sit for a month waiting for the end of storm season. Luperon is a good hurricane hole. You can wind your boat way up into the mangroves and it’s surrounded on all sides by mountains. We have some boat friends there expecting our arrival. It will be the end of the first part of our journey.
From Luperon, the real work will begin as we’ll be slogging headlong into 25 knot trade winds for 400 miles to St Thomas, USVI. We have our tactics worked out and the boat is ready.
GL