A Week in Nassau
17 March 2009 | Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas
Glenn.

Nassau is a crazy place; especially after being in quieter places..can't imagine how it'll feel after been in the Exumas. We took as slip in the Nassau Harbour Club for the first couple days, to get some provisioning done, laundry and such then we anchored in front of the Green Parrot. The Green Parrot (formerly Alligators) is a cruiser-friendly restaurant on the waterfront. They provide a free dingy-dock, free wifi internet & there is a free water spigot across the street..what else does a cruiser need? Yes, dingy/generator fuel available across the street and down a block; wahoo!
Anchoring is interesting..holding in Nassau Harbour varies. Some times you can find a sand bank, other times the bottom is pretty scoured. See, this harbour is really a cut between New Providence Island and Paradise Island. The tidal flush through the harbour and up onto the shallow banks is very strong, thus scouring the harbour bottom in places. The tide also does crazy things with the boats. We found that at slack tide, all the boats would be pointed into the wind, but in mid-tide, the tidal current would be ripping and begin to turn boats all different directions...kinda crazy. Normally one can anchor and figure that as the wind clocks around all the boats will roughly swing together maintaining a space between boats..but with them all swinging different, ones has to be pretty aware when choosing a spot to anchor. We use a very good and huge anchor, but skipped it around the harbour a bit before we found a place that it set well.
Sue and I took the kids to the Atlantis resort to sightsee for an afternoon. Quite an amazing place, with all the incredible aquariums and waterslides like we'd never seen before. The marina there is very expensive, but apparently everyone aboard the boat gets free passes to the resort for the two days..the day you arrive and the day you leave (for an overnight stay). So..we're thinking we might collect all who are interested in the anchorage to get aboard, sail into the marina and get us all passes for a couple days of playing in the marina..we'll see what actually happens.
There is actually shopping in Nassau; even a real mall! It was so good to be able to go shopping & find the things on your list. Transportation by bus is pretty easy. The bus system is much like Freeport, privately owned buses, but larger buses than the little ones we were used to. It seems that most of the buses are well equipped with powerful stereos and a selection of thumpin' island music.
We attended St. Andrews Prespeterian Kirk in Nassau..the place is spectacular and some two-hundred or more years old. The pastor (fresh from Scotland) is very good.
We stayed a week in Nassau, provisioned well and took an opening weather window for the Exuma Cays.