Provisioning, Superbowl, Casino Night, and the Floridanus

Nassau – 1 nautical mile sailed, 4 miles in dinghy, 15 kilometres walked

After the rain day yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to awake to what we’ve come to expect – clear skies, hot sun, and a steady ocean breeze. I made myself a hot drink and went out to the cockpit to say good morning to Princess Concholopolous. To my horror, she was gone! Kidnapped was my first thought, but I couldn’t find a ransom note, then upon closer examination I noticed the knot securing the dinghy from swaying in the davits had come loose and overnight conditions had been extremely turbulent with wake and current surges, so I deduced the bucket containing Princess Concholopolous must have been knocked into the ocean. I put on my mask and fins and jumped into see if I could find any trace. The current was strong and I knew the bucket would have been quickly swept away, so instead I focused my search on the Princess. As I was scanning the ocean floor, a shadow ahead of me snared my peripheral vision and I looked up to see a large piece of black fabric, suspended in the water, moving and swaying ominously as if alive, animated by the current. It scared the bejeeperjesus out of me as my first assumption was that it was a shark, or maybe a dead body. I shook off the panic then continued my search and, sure enough, there she was, right where she had dropped in, scared and alone. I tenderly lifted her and swam her back up to the swim platform. I sat down beside her, stroking her algae covered shell, as one of her eye appendages, then the other, slid out and curled around the shell to look at me. As our eyes met the horrible truth was revealed: this had been no accident – she was trying to escape. The stress and pressures of her new life in the bucket had somehow twisted her mind and she could no longer cope with the modern world. So, I let her go. Or perhaps I harvested her. In either scenario, Princess Concholopolous is no longer with us, and neither is the bucket.

It was provisioning day so we found ourselves back at the Super Value grocery store, loading up on supplies – meat, vegetables, fruit, laundry soap, milk, and all the basics. At checkout Ana was given several arm-lengths of stamps, like ride tickets at a carnival. We didn’t know what they were for.

“Are you going to use those?” asked a slim, well-dressed Bahamian guy next to us.

“Uhh..no, I don’t think so,” said Ana.

“I’ll take them!” he said, deliriously happy.

“OK,” Ana said as she handed the stamps to him then we watched him break out in the happiest happy dance we’ve ever seen. He was overjoyed and threw his head back laughing as he strutted towards the exit door.

On our way out we asked the security guard what the stamps were for.

“You get a dollar off your next purchase for every twelve stamps,” he told us.

We agreed our new friend took far more joy in the five dollar discount than we ever could have.

After helping me load the dinghy with the purchases, the girls headed back down Bay Street towards downtown while I returned to the boat, unloaded and packed away all the groceries, had lunch, emptied our organics container into the water, which were greedily snapped up off the surface by a big, ugly, scary fish hiding beneath our boat, then returned to the Yacht Haven Marina dinghy dock and began walking downtown. I stopped along the way at the new Hammerheads to say hi to Alex and check in on the progress of the renovations, which were exceedingly slow due to delays with the permitting process. They were setting up a screen for the Superbowl show this evening and I let him know we’d be back later and Stella was very keen to watch it.

I met the girls downtown at Starbucks then we went over to Burger King for an ice cream as Stella needed to test her credit card to make sure it worked, and what better way to do that then to treat your parents to a frozen dessert. There, we were spectators to a classic Bahamian kerfuffle. There were only a few customers in the small restaurant and despite repeated callings of an order number that was ready, nobody collected it. Then, as we were waiting for our two sundaes, a highly perturbed local dude shot up to the counter and started yelling at everybody in mostly impenetrable patois. We did catch a few words and they seemed to indicate the tourists were being served faster and better then him, a born and bred Bahamian. He yelled and complained for a while as the staff looked back and forth at each other, unsure of what to do as there were no other orders in the queue. The guy demanded his money back then one of the staff asked for his receipt, which he had thrown away. She then looked at the order sitting on the counter and asked if it was his. Well it sure was and he just hadn’t been paying attention to the dude calling out his number. He snatched his food, uttered some obscenities, then left. The staff started laughing and rolling their eyes at each other. Meanwhile, my caramel sundae had been sitting on the counter for quite some time, melting slowly.

“Can I help you?” one of the staff asked Ana.

“We’re waiting for our order. That’s one of the sundaes there on the counter,” Ana said, pointing to my deteriorating dessert.

“Oh. What else did you get?”

“A strawberry sundae. I saw you put one in the fridge a while ago.”

“Oh. Did you want it now?” she asked, helpfully.

“Sure, why not?” Ana responded, cheerfully.

After enjoying our sundaes, we walked back to the marina, got in the dinghy, and motored back to SeaLight, along the way noticing a dive boat with the thought-provoking and image conjuring name of “Floridanus” that just begged for hypothesis and speculation. I took a photo and we carried on.

After repositioning SeaLight to a closer anchorage, happy hour was upon us. The girls had icy pina coladas while I settled on a PBR, then together we prepared a delectable dinner of Spanish rice and fish tacos which were a gamely mix of squirrelfish, lionfish, and blue runner fillets, thereby using up our current inventory of locally-sourced (by way of spear) ocean fishes. After racing through dinner and dishes we reboarded the dinghy, cruised back into the marina, and got ourselves seated at Hammerheads to watch the game. Have I become a football fan? Nope, far from it, but I sure do like hanging out in bars drinking cold beer. We remained there until after the dreadfully awful, nearly unwatchable, stupid halftime show by Kendrick Lamar then set our sights on Paradise Island and walked across the bridge, which seemed to have grown in height and span since we were last here (or perhaps it had been too many days on the boat with too little walking). We got settled in a giant sports viewing and betting area in the Atlantis casino. The game was a total blowout in favour of the team not fronted by Taylor Swift, but Stella wanted to stay until the end to see the colour of Gatorade the winners dumped on their coach…must be some sort of Tiktok thing. I don’t get it. But it was yellow.

Next, we hit the casino. Stella was excited for her first gambling experience and we were interested to see how she handled it. The casino was full of people, playing both the high tech digital slots, roulette, and blackjack games, unburdened by metal pull handles or flesh and blood dealers (somewhat diminishing the experience in my opinion), but thankfully many old fashioned craps, blackjack, poker, and roulette tables, with human dealers and a minimum ante of $15. Stella and Ana went halfsies, each feeding five bucks into a digital slot machine, agreeing to equally split any fabulous win or crushing loss. Well, she played for about five minutes and once she worked her balance up to twenty bucks, thereby doubling their investment, she tapped the button to cash out. In modern casinos you don’t even need to visit the cashier anymore – you just feed your receipt into a different machine and it spits out bills. In the end she was happy she made a bit of money but wasn’t overly impressed with the casino experience as the thought of losing her hard-earned money to senseless games did not make any sense to her.

The girls were not quite ready to go home so we wandered the Atlantis grounds for a long while, admiring all the sharks and fish and rays in the incredible aquarium, the warm evening, the quiet, the darkness. It was a pleasant end to an excellent day.