Bahamas: Nassau and Atlantis

Day 267
April 3, 2016
NM Today: 37
NM Total: 4089
Time traveled: 4 hours 40 mins

The alarm went off at 6:25 today so that Clark could get up to listen to a short-wave radio broadcast of weather. Of the two possible reports, none were given owing to it being Sunday today. Getting up early was not a complete waste of time, however, because Clark got an amazing picture of the morning sky.

Early Morning Sky at Frazers Hog Cay Anchorage

Clark decided that we should "make a break for it" and head for Nassau today. Since the sooner we left, the sooner we got there, we had the anchor up and were exiting the anchorage by 7:30. It took several minutes to raise the anchor. I manned the helm and Clark man-handled the anchor. The raising of the anchor required a lot of muscle, and since he did not want a tangled mess of anchor line, he kept stopping periodically to coil the line neatly. When I saw that he had the anchor up and was just tidying up, I turned the boat towards the channel to exit the anchorage and started us on our way.

As we motored out of the anchorage, we got two calls on the VHF radio. The first was from a fellow boater with no internet access who asked for a weather report for the trip to Nassau. Clark filled her in with what he knew of the weather. The second call we received was from Bob wishing us fair winds and calm seas for our trip.

I had four hours to sit and think (when I didn't have control of the helm). Being here in the Bahamas, I know I should be awestruck at my good fortune, but I found myself feeling depressed today. Yesterday was an electronics nightmare day. First the battery in Clark's watch died, so he had no convenient way to know the time. Then, after we anchored and he tried to set up his hot spot on his cell phone, it refused to work (it worked the day before), and last but certainly not least for me, my laptop decided to rebel against starting up. When I push the on button, it lights up, and then shuts back down with a decided "click". Clark thinks it might be my hard drive going bad.

Since we are in a foreign country, I have no cell phone service, and I am dependent on Clark's hotspot or WiFi for internet. That in conjunction with the laptop going flaky means I lose a huge portion of how I pass my time. So far the laptop does light up if I push the on button enough times. If the laptop fails completely while I am here in the Bahamas, however, my ability to blog will be severely compromised.

Bob from Aftermath called us one more time after we had been on our way for about an hour just to see how the wind and wave action was treating us. His call served to get my mind off my electronics woes and start me thinking about stories he  had told us when he came to visit by dinghy yesterday evening. First he told us a fish story.  It seems he caught a barracuda that he planned to use as bait. He left the fish hanging on the line from his pole off the back of the boat. A shark came right up out of the water and ate the fish. When the shark left, he took both the fish and Bob's lure with him.

The next story he told us related to Frazers Hog Cay itself. A wealthy Brit built a manor house on the Cay. Several houses were then constructed to form a city of sorts. The sole purpose of the smaller houses was to house the people supporting the operation of the manor house. All of the houses in the "city" are now abandoned. Bob called it the "abandoned city".

Since no one has inhabited the large house in at least twelve years, Bob said he walked through it just to see what was there. He said it was very eerie inside as if one day the people went out and just never came back. Canned goods can still be found in the kitchen cupboards, for example. He recommended we dinghy over to explore, but we had no time given our desire to get to Nassau during our good weather window.

Having left so early in the morning, we found ourselves entering Nassau right about 12 o'clock. When entering Nassau Harbour, boaters must call the Harbour Control to request permission to enter. Clark gave them our boat documentation number, which is all they required to allow us entry.

Three cruise ships greeted us as our first site as we came into Nassau. As we passed by them, I saw Carnival Ecstasy, Royal Caribbean - Oasis of the Seas, and Majesty of the Sea. We passed right next to Oasis and people on the very top deck waved to us. I waved back and that got more people to wave. Oasis is one tall ship!

Three Cruise Ships in Port in Nassau Today

Scene as we entered Nassau, Bahamas

We docked our boat at Nassau Yacht Haven. Our first order of business upon securing the boat was walking to the food market to pick up some essentials. Since today is Sunday and the market closed at 3:00, we had to get there first.

Every time I read anything on Nassau, including information contained in the nautical charts book, I received warnings of the high crime here. We locked up Sea Moss right and tight when we left her even though with no windows open we knew it would be stifling hot inside when we returned. As we walked to the store, I noted the high security in the area. When we registered, we were buzzed into the marina office. Then we found the pharmacy across the street from the marina has bars across the entire front. When Clark wanted to enter the pharmacy, he had to push a button and get buzzed into the store.

Further down the street we saw a boatyard with barbed wire fencing all around the property. It was pretty nasty barbed wire as barbed wire goes. It reminded me of movies I have seen of security at German concentration camps or prisons. It certainly did not give me a warm and cozy feeling walking down the street. Everyone we had talked to had emphasized that we be off the streets before dark. I read a local travel recommendation that we could take buses during the day to get to sites, but by no means should we travel by bus at night - only by taxi.

We reached the Fresh Market without being accosted or mugged, and I was much relieved. The other caveat that we received about the Bahamas was the cost of everything including food. That is why we spent a ton of money in the states provisioning the boat. Even with the advanced warning on food prices, I nearly went into shock when I saw the prices.

I thought vegetables would be safe and headed for the tomatoes. At $5.15 per pound ($4.99 + V.A.T.) I was flabbergasted. The scale for weighing produce was not-so-conveniently full of pieces of cardboard, so I could not be sure but I thought the two tomatoes I selected were going to set me back a bit. I passed the grapefruit by at $2.50 each. The ones I bought in Florida were $1.00 a piece.

I needed bread, milk, O.J. and some deli meat. When we left the store, we had eleven items in our cart that had cost us a total of $77.00. Ouch! I think the bill in the states would be about half what we paid here. Thank goodness I did not need more items. I decided the high crime is due to the high prices. How can anyone afford to live here???

The food shopping job done, we stopped by the boat to drop off our provisions and then headed right back out again to go sightseeing. We had heard about Atlantis and headed there. We asked the marina guard at the front how to get there and he said to go over the first bridge and just keep going from there. Sounded simple enough!

The walk to Atlantis took us past some pretty interesting sites. As we crossed the bridge we looked down on numerous "shacks" lined up on either side of the bridge. Each one advertised the availability of a local Bahamian beer and most enticed folks to come eat Conch in one form or another - Conch salad seemed a poplar option.

Conch & Beer Shacks along bridge

Looking to North East from bridge over Nassau

Looking back at "our" marina to see Sea Moss at dock

Atlantis! Our destination.

I had no idea what to expect from Atlantis. Clark mentioned they had an aquarium, but I was not prepared for what we found there.

Real Bahamas Cuisine! 

After our 30 minute walk to get to Atlantis, Clark said he wanted ice cream. I did not expect to find anything very tempting in that department. The last place with home-made ice cream only had guava flavor. I never expected to find Ben & Jerry's ice cream right around the corner shortly after Clark made his wish be known.

Having enjoyed our treats, we headed in the direction of the casino with hopes that we would be able to find the aquarium from there.

Sculpture at entrance to Casino in Atlantis

The aquarium was free of charge and entirely built around the Lost City of Atlantis theme. We walked through tunnels surrounded by tanks with sea life in them.

View of Atlantis Aquarium from Restaurant

Clark took tons of photos today. It would take hours to upload them all. He was 'snap happy' at the aquarium.

"Who you lookin' at?"

Artwork on Walls of Aquarium

This ugly guy reminded me of Flotsam and Jetsam from
The Little Mermaid movie 

After walking through the tunnels, we stepped out into the beach area. Talk about a tropical paradise, Atlantis had something for everyone of all ages.

Lagoon Beach on Paradise Island

Close up of "shell" pagoda at Lagoon Beach in Atlantis

Shark and Sting Rays Display

Closeup of Shark and Stingray laying in wait for unsuspecting prey

After the barbed wire and iron-barred stores near our marina, I felt like I had stepped into an entirely different world by just crossing the bridge. As we walked through the casino and dress shops etc, it reminded me of the time we spent on the cruise ship in Alaska. Everything was right there in one place to entertain.

Given the dire warnings of crime, Clark thought we should head back to the boat at 5:00. We did and we arrived back at the marina at 5:30. On our way back I asked Clark to take a couple of pictures. One to show the height of the bridge we had to climb over to get to and from Atlantis. It was steep!

Tall bridge we crossed to get to and back from Atlantis

The other was a boat covered with Conch Shells by the Conch Shacks we had passed on our way to Atlantis.

Boat with Conch Shells 

I wanted to throw some items in the laundry when I got back, but I found that the washers and dryers required tokens and the office closed at 5:00. That chore will need to wait. The next item on my agenda was a shower due to the heat and humidity. When I told Clark I was leaving to take a shower while he washed down the boat, I got a grumble back. Uh-oh, grumbles are not good.

He had connected the hose, turned it on, and got no water. We had read that the water pressure was poor - not that it was non-existent. Someone had hired a young man to wash the boat next to us. Since he was busy cleaning inside that boat, we asked if we could turn off the water to his hose. With that done we managed to get a dribble out of our hose as long as we held the hose in a position whereby gravity could assist the flow.

We each took a small bucket, which we refilled multiple times, and washed the salt of the boat by hand one small bucket at a time. If I wasn't hot before that activity, I was beyond overheated by the time I was done. Unfortunately by the time we finished, it was already 7:00 and I was starving. The shower would have to wait.

After seeing the prices of food in the market, I decided that I needed to bake Clark a sweet treat. I refused to pay over $25 for a 10" apple pie. After dinner I made him a Wild-blueberry Cake from a recipe I found on line. I had all the ingredients that it required right in my ship's stores, so from my point of view, the cake was "free". We had a piece each for late-night snack. It was very berry and very yummy!

After much debating with himself, Clark finally decided that we should stay here in Nassau one more night. Weather for tomorrow predicts a rainstorm in the morning (5:00 a.m.) and then another in the afternoon. The one in the afternoon is predicted to bring 2 inches of rain. Should be interesting! Clark thought it would be more enjoyable to be in a marina in a hard rainstorm rather than at anchor. Also we have some business to attend to that could not be done on a Sunday, so that gives us additional motivation to wait one more day before leaving here.

Bonus - by staying, I get WiFi as long as my laptop does not give up on me!