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, powerful 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.

Storming Atlantis, Conch Salads, Hammerheads (2 Sorts), and Revisiting our Bahamian Romance

Nassau – 19 kilometres walked, 5 miles in dinghy

The second thing you need to do after anchoring in a new place (and we put out our second anchor this morning as a backup for the strong winds) is figure out where to stash your dinghy while you explore land. This we found at Nassau Yacht Haven, for the reasonable price of $11/day. We tried to get them to throw in access to their water tap to fill up our jugs, but they said water was reserved for marina guests.

We did the long walk down Bay Street to the tourist area, along the way passing through some rugged patches with many empty buildings and lots, but a newish Rum Cake Factory (which I think our friend Kate cleaned out when they were here). I tried to spot some locations I used to frequent when I lived here – Gold’s Gym and a popular waterside restaurant whose name I’ve forgotten, but they were both gone. My favourite bar – Hammerheads, where all Nassau adventures began and ended, was still there but now called 7 Ships, and it was hard to tell if it was still operating, as it looked even more beat up then when I’d last been here 15 years ago, but somebody had built a second level treehouse that looked cool and was probably great for stunting.

Four cruise ships had arrived overnight, creating a wall of windows and curved steel, and the downtown area swarmed with tourists. I wandered around or found shade leaning against buildings while the ladies explored the shops and Straw Market – a covered shopping area for Bahamian handicrafts that had burned down and been completely rebuilt in 2011. I think they also realized at that time that making handicrafts was not worth the effort so everything I saw there – carvings, dolls, t-shirts, keychains, and various bits of useless knick-knackery (identical from stall to stall) looks to have come from Chinese shipping containers. Ana quickly noticed the knock-off luxury bags were conspicuously absent from the inventory, but it didn’t take her long to find a shifty-eyed vendor who called a lady, who called another lady, exchanged secret handshakes and a quirky Bahamian lip signal, then one of them shuffled Ana across Bay and down a sketchy side street littered with small shops selling phony Gucci and Luis Vuitton purses, of which Ana already owns a hundred, some of which came from these exact ladies. Well, she returned with a tightly wrapped treasure, assuring me she’d paid for the outstanding replica handbag with the Christmas envelope stuffed with juicy, fresh cash, given to her by her parents. I guess John and Maria must have filled it with Bahamian currency this year.

We were getting hungry and the free rum cake samples we were swiping from every tourist store just weren’t filling the gap, and we didn’t want to join the tourist hordes at Senior Frogs for crappy chicken fingers, so we started walking back from whence we came. Along the way we stopped at a huge building called The Restaurant Supply Company and were shocked to discover a warehouse full of every non-fresh food and drink you could imagine, everything a boater would need to provision. Some of it was quite expensive, like the toiletries and breakfast cereal, but many items were the same or cheaper than what we were paying in Florida. We had a good look around, made some mental notes of things we might need before we left Nassau, then picked up a few wobbly pops for the road, including a Sands Grapefruit Radler that Ana loved, so we’ll be grabbing a case of those.

As we passed 7 Ships we saw movement and made eye contact with a young dude who was opening up the doors. He waved us over. We went inside. I said, “Hammerheads!” and gave him a high five.

“You were here when it was Hammerheads?” said the guy, both surprised and happy.

“Yes sir. I spent most of the money I made as a high flying expat right here. And all my family and friends spent all their money here too. All my adventures began and ended at Hammerheads.”

“Mine too, I was a customer here at Hammerheads from the age of 15, then I managed it for 8 years, then took a break and built a successful construction company, and just today I signed a lease for this place and I’m going to bring it back to life.”

“By ‘back to life’ do you mean Hammerhead’s perpetual state of near death?”

“No, I’m actually going to rebuild it and make it look good.”

I was confused. “Are you serious?”

“Yep. My construction team will have it done in two months. It’s going to be nice and bright and family friendly.?

“Family friendly?? What sort of families?”

“Those kind,” he said, then we exchanged a knowing nod. “Let me get you a cold Kalik while we discuss further.”

Alex was a Bahamian, a white one (yes, rare, but they exist), and he had a plan. Though he had not yet been issued a business license, he was operating as a private club and invited us to join the party Friday or Saturday night. While Alex and I chatted, the girls looked around the place, and Ana had a conversation with the only other person there – an artist who was going to be creating the exterior murals.

I was beyond happy that a version of Hammerheads had endured all these years. We’d be back, probably daily.

Alex wasn’t doing any food yet so sent us over to Donny’s conch shack at Potter’s Cay, an area beneath one of the bridges to Paradise Island full of food shacks, and mostly out of reach of the tourist hoards. It smells of fish, is dirty, and eating here is the most authentic Bahamian experience you could have on the island.

We walked past the many conch shacks to Donny’s, which was the last on the right. Donny came right out, offered us drinks, then took our orders. There’s no menu board, he just tells you what he has. I asked for a conch salad, medium heat. Ana took cracked conch. Anna and Stella went for fried red snapper.

The girls sat transfixed as they watched Donny prepare the conch salad. He picked up a conch shell and beat it with the claw of a hammer, creating a hole in just the right spot, then slid in a thin knife, made a small cut, and pulled out the magnificent snail, with its one long pulling claw, two googly eyes perched on the end of flexible antennae, and plump, fleshy firm body. He dropped the snail in a bucket then diced an onion, a tomato, a green pepper, a goat pepper, tapped on some salt, then mixed it up on his cutting board. He then brought over the conch, trimmed off the unusable bits, diced it, and mixed it in with the rest, scooped it all into a plastic tub then doused it with the juice from a fresh lime and orange.

As we were watching this I leaned over and asked Donny if I could have the jelly tube. He smiled, pulled a conch out of the bucket, and passed it over to me. I pulled the thin jelly tube out of its ass (or maybe that is its ass, I’m not sure), held it up in the air, then sucked it back. Then I had another one. And a third. Knowing the Bahamians hold the jelly tube in the highest regard as the most powerful aphrodisiac in the universe, I was expecting a giant tapir-sized erection to burst forth from my shorts and knock everybody over. But maybe that was asking too much, now that I’m in my fifties. Instead, I just started munching on my conch salad, in heaven, as it had been fifteen years since my last one. The experience of eating a conch salad is indescribable, and anyways I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you in case you’re yet to have your first one.

The girls loved their meals, despite it being a whole fried snapper and requiring some extraction work instead of a lame-assed Sysco pressed boneless and tasteless fish fillet. Ana’s cracked conch was equally good, cracked conch being simply the snail beaten with a tenderizing mallet, dipped in batter, and deep fried. Oh, and the French fries? Donny cut up fresh potatoes, one each, and threw them in the frier to golden perfection.

While we ate, the conch man arrived, carrying two strings of conch, and dropped them into Donny’s kitchen, as he spoke in rapid and indecipherable Bahamian patois. The conch man wore a purple toque, dirty shorts, a fishy shirt, had a sleazy gold grill with a damp cigarette clamped in tightly with an incisor, and was highly intoxicated. Donny pulled a Guinness out of his cooler, popped it, and offered it to conch man, who promptly dropped it, shattering glass and beer over our shoes. It was time to go anyway.

I don’t think the girls could fully comprehend or appreciate the truly authentic Bahamian experience they had just enjoyed. But they are just 18, and at 18 I was super dumb and inexperienced so they are way further along than I was. I sincerely hope this incredible trip gifts them the same lifelong love affair both Ana and I have with the Bahamas.

We walked across the bridge to Paradise Island and snuck into the Atlantis Hotel and Casino. It’s always been easy to sneak into Atlantis – we’ve done it dozens of times. I really don’t think the staff care too much.

The girls loved it, I mean really loved it. In the aquariums and outdoor pools we saw reef fish, giant Nassau grouper, nurse sharks, reef sharks, hammerhead sharks, lion fish, lobsters, rays, eels, and turtles. The girls scoped out the waterslides for a future visit and Ana yoinked two Atlantis towels they could use as part of their disguise as guests. It’s not really stealing – we’ll give them back when we’re done with them. Probably. We walked a rope bridge, saw the Michael Jackson suite, checked out the beach, admired the waterfalls, had ice cream at the Barbie-themed restaurant, stopped into the luxury shops, walked the marine village, and, of course, ogled the superyachts moored there. We also showed the kids the exact spot where Ana and I met in 1998, in the casino, at a slot machine. No, it’s not the same slot machine, and the configuration has changed some, but it was the exact spot.

I kissed my beautiful wife, happy that we’d come so far together, and were back here in the place where our lifelong romance began.