Passage to Nassau

Great Harbor to Nassau was the next leg of our journey south. Waves were, on average, 3 feet, some peaking at 4 feet, but were spaced 3 seconds apart. Bodies were constantly moving as the boat rocked up and down on each wave. The sun was hidden behind a blanket of clouds and mixed with the wind, it was a bit chilly. All of these components made it a fairly uncomfortable journey, so I braced myself for a wobbly stumble down into the cabin and forward into our bed where I attempted to nap with hopes of fast forwarding the trip. Each time the boat slammed down, my body sank into the bed and reminded me of the feeling of laying on a trampoline while people around are jumping. That was more tolerable than the alternative, so I stayed there until we were approaching the channel between Nassau and Paradise Island, which has this lighthouse on its western tip.

As we pulled in, there were 3 giant cruise ships. The anchorage we navigated to seemed to be in the way of the ships and we didn't want to get run over, so we kept cruising and passed that one. We approached the channel adjacent to the cruise ships and heard a loud, long horn, indicating that one of those 3 ships that was about 40x longer than our Cartermaran and towered over us was going to be departing, so we had to get out of the way of it. The question was, which one?! We turned back to the original anchorage and dropped the anchor as we watched the ship that was closest to the channel back up, rotate, and follow the pilot boat out of the harbor. It was amazing to see how a ship so large could manage to maneuver in such a narrow channel.

Over the next few hours, we watched as the 2 other ships did the same while fielding the unlimited asks from the kids of our stay at Atlantis. We had no plans of staying there and they thought we were joking so they kept trying to figure out when we would be there.

In the morning, we pulled our anchor and set off for the fuel dock. We were down a quarter of a tank and wanted to fill up with quality fuel before heading south. The pump was closed when we got there, so we had to wait a bit. Ben ran to the store to get a come along to help lift the tender until we have a better solution for lifting it. We have a hydraulic ram for the davit coming with some guests, so this had to do for the time being. When he got back, we filled up ($6.15/gallon which was significantly cheaper than the $7.18/gallon in Lake Worth, FL) and set off for Highbourne Cay.