Nassau – 4 kilometres walked, 4 miles in dinghy
The cold front with its associated strong northerly winds swept in today and by the evening it was blowing at 20 knots and gusting higher than that. A few boats had left the anchorage, but there were still at least eight or ten others here so we didn’t want to leave SeaLight unattended for long. I did an early water run to Potters Cay and filled up our five jugs, to the sound of heavy reggae being blasted from a SUV with massive speakers and the owner nowhere in sight. None of the conch shacks were open and the place was mostly deserted, except one dude with a ripped shirt, filthy pants, and dreadlocks encased in a vibrant scarf who dancing to the music as he watched me at the tap.
Late morning we decided to take a short dinghy ride to Atlantis to see if we could find the dinghy dock which we’d heard about but not yet seen. I activated the mirroring on my anchor alarm app so we could see the boat’s position from Ana’s phone and race back in case the anchor dragged with the winds. We were able to zoom through the main channel as there were very few boats out today due to the weather, so the water surface was not boiling with wake as it usually is. We motored slowly into the Atlantis marina and eyeballed all the massive yachts, as all they accept here are massive yachts. This trip we are on is decadent and incredible, but seeing the extravagance of these big boys is otherworldly and, honestly, hard to imagine what that level of wealth would be like. I’d bet on one thing, though – we’re having more fun than them. The dinghy dock was hidden behind three of these monsters and we had to wiggle our way between them to get to it. Once there, we asked the dockmaster if we could leave our dinghy for a while and they said no problem.
Paradise Island doesn’t have a lot on it besides Atlantis, but we hadn’t explored the south side so we walked up the street and found a shopping plaza, a small straw market, a collection of food trucks, and a largish grocery store where most of the shelves were barren and prices of the items they did have were exorbitant, except for the chopped turkey in packages for two bucks a pound (which we couldn’t have fit in our freezer even if we did want it) and a bottle of Dijon mustard which was only four bucks, the cheapest things in the store, and our only purchase.
We stopped at Potters Cay for a final fill of the water jugs then returned to SeaLight for some afternoon cleaning – Ana scrubbed the filthy dingy until it was spotless and I swabbed the decks, then we cleaned the cockpit together, made up the guest bed, cleaned the heads, then vacuumed, but only after Ana gave me a quick haircut. I also invested a bit of time in assembling the food stamps we were awarded at the grocery store on the playing cards they gave us. Since the stamp backs weren’t sticky, and we don’t have a stapler on board, I used the next best adhesive – leftover caulking. It was time well spent as the final product will give us a whopping four dollars in credit the next time we shop there, enough to buy one small avocado or a third of a box of Fruit Loops.
In the evening, between monitoring the boat movements in the anchorage and making dinner (tough New York strips, salad and spiced yuca), we discussed our plan for the journey home. Our friends arrive tomorrow, will stay for a week, then we will sail for the Abacos at the first opportunity, which will likely be the last area of the Bahamas we will explore before starting our return journey northwards.
Our goal moving southwards from Canada was to see as much as possible, explore the towns we passed through, stay ahead of the cooling weather, and time our Florida arrival for Ana’s return flight to Canada for Christmas. That trip from start to finish took ten weeks. Our goal for the return journey is slightly different. We’d like to remain in the warm as long as we can, particularly because the northern winter this year has been so brutal, but our three-month Bahamas cruising permit expires April 6 so we need to be out of the Bahamas by that date. The other date we are working towards is May 1, when Ana returns to work, but the Erie Canal does not open until May 16, so she will have to fly home from wherever we get to by the end of April.
We’ve been told by several other cruisers that the return trip is much faster due to the longer days, fewer stops, and possibility of faster offshore runs, particularly from Bahamas where the Gulf Stream gives you a couple of extra knots of speed. In fact, a couple in a catamaran we met last week said they can make it to New York City in just over a week if they do it in three offshore jumps and the weather cooperates. It’s about 850 nautical miles from Abaco to New York City, which works out to 121 miles per day, which translates to an average speed of 5 knots. It all checks out. We do not need to get there that quickly, but it’s nice to know it’s possible.
Our plan will likely be to do offshore runs where we can and where the weather permits, stop at a few places we missed along the way and others we really enjoyed, and keep chasing the sun, but this time it will be the glorious sun of southern Ontario.
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