Hanging out in Nassau

We left the Exumas last Wednesday, 5/13. The high winds were coming in again and we wanted to make it to Nassau where we would be more protected in a marina. Today is Wednesday, 5/20 and we are still waiting for the winds to die down before we can leave. We need 3 good weather days to get back to Florida. When we leave here we will travel about 5 hours to the Berry Islands and Frasier’s Hog Cay. Then we will travel from there to Bimini which will be a very long 10 hour day. Then we have another 10 hour day to somewhere in Florida, we hope to Lake Worth at West Palm Beach. Right now we are hoping to leave tomorrow and if we are very lucky, we will be back in Florida late on Saturday. We are keeping toes and fingers crossed.

Yesterday we have had thunderstorms off and on. We saw winds of over 50 knots. Good thing we doubled all our lines. So, we have been rocking and rolling on the boat all week. We all decided that we needed to get off the boats and have some fun so on Saturday we went to Atlantis for a water park day. Atlantis is a combination of a Las Vegas-like casino and Disney World. There are several huge hotels and lots of condos, restaurants and shops. They have 3 magnificent aquariums. We walked around and saw the hotel and aquariums then it was off to the water park for lots of laughs. Some of those rides were pretty thrilling.

Pictures of the Atlantis Hotel

One of the three aquariums

Manta Ray

Vicki and Lynnie

Look down fish

Moon Jellies

Goliath Grouper and friend

Stopped for lunch and this sign was next to our table

Lynnie and Rick in front of a cool flying fish sculpture

Yesterday we went ‘downtown’ to the Straw Market where they sell everything you can think of.
At the Straw Market

A very cool mural on the wall downtown.

While we have enjoyed Nassau we are ready to gooooooo. Hope to be in the US on Saturday. We’ll update the blog when we get there.

Saying Good-bye to the Exumas

We left the Exumas last Wednesday, 5/13. The high winds were coming in again and we wanted to make it to Nassau where we would be more protected in a marina. Before we left we visited three more Cay’s. Here are some additional pictures of the anchorage at Black Point Settlement.

The water is so clear that the dingy looks like it is floating above the water !
This is the local mail boat which also brings provisions to the local stores. It comes to each settlement once a week. Sometimes it brings mail, sometimes not. Sometimes it brings lettuce and tomatoes, sometimes not!

We anchored next to a very tiny island called Rat Cay. The even smaller islands around it are called the Mice. We took our dingies into a larger place called Sampson Cay and had a great lunch, played horse shoes and consumed numerous Kaliks and Rum Punches waiting for the tide to come back in enough for us to get the dingies into the water. What a fun day that was.

Stranded dingies
Lunch and doing a blog at the picnic tables
The gang trying their hands at horse shoes (when was the last time you played that!)
Rick relaxing…horse shoes must have worn him out

Local character

Rocky coast

Another gorgeous sunset

Our last stop was at Shroud Cay. Vicki and Norm and Rick tried to do some snorkeling but the current was pretty strong so they didn’t get to do much. That fact that Vicki saw a shark in the water may have had something to do with the shortened snorkeling time. We were anchored, as we always were in the Exumas on the ‘bank’ or western side of the islands which provided us protection from the east winds. On the eastern side of the islands is the Exumas Sound or the Atlantic Ocean.

We were told of a creek that went through Shroud from the west to the east and ended at a beautiful beach. So, we dingied into the creek and headed over to the beach. It was a really beautiful mile long ride and, as advertised the beach was beautiful.

The ride over to the beach
The beach and Lynnie and Vicki making new tracks in the sand

This is a carin which is a collection of rocks in a shape of a pyramid that someone put there to mark a trail. You find them all over the Exumas and we have learned all over the world. S0me of them are several feet tall, this one was about a foot tall. In this instance it marked the place where, if you climbed up a hill, you would find the remains of Camp Driftwood, a place where a sailor lived for 40 years!! Very remote. Someone also left an empty Kalik beer bottle at this one.
Carin and the view from the top of the hill to the creek that we had just come in on.

More on where we are on tomorrow's blog.