New Providence has a bit of a bad rep with the cruising community, but frankly we love it. We spent the second half of June enjoying all the island has to offer. There were lots of underwater activities, a little hiking, some treasure hunting, a bit of relaxation, and several water slides involved. If that doesn’t sum up what a kid’s dream of summer is, I don’t know what does. Basically, we’re just big kids enjoying fun in the sun!
Dive sites of New Providence
We sail from the northern Exumas to Palm Cay Marina at the southeast corner of New Providence Island. Upon arriving at the marina, we are a bit surprised to see how narrow of an entrance it is, and even more surprised when realizing that we’re one of the smallest catamarans here. This is a charter base for a couple different operations, and there are some massive catamarans at the docks – including one that is 70 feet! The marina is really nice, and we are definitely looking forward to some AC and free WiFi. The marina also offers a courtesy car, which we use to go get groceries and some Wendy’s (can’t resist American fast food). In order to fully take advantage of our location on this populated island, we once again order Dominos delivery as well.
Although being at the marina for a couple nights is nice, our main focus during this visit to New Providence is on diving. We’ve been doing our research and have found there are lots of dive site moorings around the Southwest side of the island. Leaving the marina, we head over to the West Bay anchorage which will put us in close proximity to the dive sites. As we motor over, we are already spotting several moorings, but also a lot of dive boats. We don’t technically know the rules about using dive moorings – just that as long as no one else is around who might need to use it, we generally feel okay to tie up for an hour or two. Seeing so many dive boats here, though, we make a mental note to only try using the moorings in the late afternoons once tours are typically finished.
There is only one other boat in the anchorage when we arrive, so I pick out a nice spot and drop the anchor (all by myself!) from the helm position. I back down and note a strong set on the first try. I’m feeling pretty good about myself; just don’t ask me to try retrieving the anchor by myself – way more difficult. Once Matt has finished with work, we load up the dinghy and set out to snorkel at the nearby Goulding Cay, which we already know is fantastic from our last visit.
The next morning, we load up the Brownie into the dinghy determined to actually enjoy using it. We stop at two moorings, noting both are wrecks from the James Bond movies. The wrecks are small and not that exciting, but we decide to get in for a few minutes anyways. At least we’re using the hookah! After a few minutes at each wreck, we head back over to Goulding Cay to use the hookah some more. It’s a very relaxing dive, and we’re rewarded with seeing most of the usual fish suspects including a reef shark.
Feeling excited at getting to use the hookah system, we set out in search of dive sites a second day, but this time aboard Sea Monster. We aren’t sure if we will be able to actually tie up to a mooring or not, but we figure we can at least get coordinates and maybe peak into the water to see what the site is about. Turns out, the water is so flat that we can see straight down 50+ feet from up on the boat! It’s so crazy; we are just driving over a marked site, look down and start calling out what type of wreck it is. No diving required.
We plot numerous dive sites, enjoying looking down into the clear water as we go. Matt is doing most of the driving, which allows me to be the primary spotter. Just while driving around, I see sting rays, turtles, fish (of course), and a small shark! After a couple hours, we have marked around 8 different wreck diving sites and a similar number of wall dives. On one hand, this is great – lots of diving options. On the other hand, we don’t particularly enjoy wreck dives (especially small movie wrecks), and the wall dives are really too deep to use the hookah system. So… we end back at Goulding Cay in our dinghy! The reef here is very large, so we choose a completely different area to explore this time.
Check out our map if you’re interested in dive site locations – all underwater sites are indicated by a blue fish icon!
Finding buried treasure
During one of our visits at Goulding Cay, I spot something on the sandy bottom below. A quick peek confirms that it is a weight belt. I hop in the water to go retrieve it. This would be a great idea except that I am already wearing 10 pounds of lead (getting ready to dive) and turns out the weight belt has 10 pounds of lead in it as well. I free dive down about 25 feet and then have to return with 20 pounds of lead. I *barely* make it – only because I’m too stubborn to just drop the weight belt and go back to retrieve it using the hookah. It works though. After about 10 minutes of relaxing, my breathing is back to normal and I have a nice new weight belt with pouches plus 10 pounds of lead. What a find!
I’m still feeling pretty proud of my find the next day as we are snorkeling around our boat in the anchorage. There are lots of (dead) sea biscuits, which look like an inflated sand dollars. We haven’t picked up any of these for our shell collection yet, so we are searching for the perfect one. There are dozens of bleached ones here and it’s hard to believe we haven’t found one anywhere else we’ve been yet. As we are swimming around, we notice something metal sticking up slightly out of the sand. It’s a bar of some kind and slightly curved. Popping up to the surface to discuss, we decide that it could be some type of anchor.
I swim off initially not that interested, but Matt is determined to uncover it. He keeps diving down, digging away at the sand a little bit each time. After a while, he’s uncovered enough to confirm that it is indeed an anchor, and not just any anchor, but a Rocna 25 kg/55lb. This is the exact anchor that we have on our boat and it’s a great anchor. Now he’s got my full attention and we’re both diving down, digging away at the sand. This thing is really stuck, so after a while we decide it’s probably worthwhile to pull out the hookah if we’re ever going to pull this thing up.
Even with using the hookah, it takes us another 20-30 minutes of constant digging and pulling on the anchor to finally get it free. We’re pretty excited at this point because the anchor looks to be in great shape. Now we just need to get it back to the boat – easier said than done. We do a combination of swimming and hopping to get the anchor the short distance back to our boat. We each lock one hand around the anchor bar, and get in a rythm of lifting up on every 3-count; which is hard when you’re underwater and can’t hear each other counting. It works though and we soon have the anchor resting just below the stern of our boat.
Next we rig up a pulley system using what already exists to hoist our dinghy up onto its davits. With a little extra rope and some cleverly tied knots, we are now able to use our electric wrench to lift the anchor up out of the water and place it on the stern of our boat. A little time spent cleaning up the sand, dirt, and rust and we have a brand new looking anchor!
Tangent: You may be wondering why and/or how someone would just 1) lose their anchor and 2) not go retrieve it. We ask ourselves the same question, and come up with some plausible options. The way the anchor was facing in the sand would suggest the wind was coming out of the west and the attached boat would be facing out into open seas. In any normal circumstances, you wouldn’t anchor facing out into open ocean – unless maybe the wind and waves are extremely calm. This likely suggests that someone was caught off guard by unexpected strong west winds. The anchor did it’s job and held, but the shackle attaching the anchor to its chain was rusted and broke under the force. If the conditions were actually bad when this happened, the loss of an anchor was probably the least of the captain’s concerns at that moment. They would likely head for safety of another anchorage (everyone has a backup anchor) or a marina. Even if they came back looking for the anchor another time, it would be extremely hard to find in a large anchorage with such a small part visible.
So anyways, we have a new anchor. This makes 4 anchors on our boat now – or actually 5 if you count our small dinghy anchor. We’re all for having back-ups of our back-ups, but 4 is probably too many. We will likely look to sell the anchor at some point. The hookah is practically already paying for itself (or a fraction of the cost at least)!
Atlantis Paradise Island
Last time that we were at Nassau, we wanted to splurge and spend a night or two at Atlantis. Unfortunately, at the time they were sold out of marina space for the next several weeks. On a bit of a whim, I decide to give Atlantis a call and see if they have any availability now. They do! They have two nights available starting tomorrow that we can reserve. These are the only two nights available during the next several weeks, so we count our lucky stars and take it! It’s very expensive at $5/foot per night, but it gets us access to all of the amenities including the infamous water slides (known as “Aquadventure”).
The next day we pull into the marina, gliding onto the dock like pros. It’s probably one of our smoothest dockings to date, which feels really good since all the boats in here are fancy mega yachts (plus a couple other nice catamarans and large fishing boats). We get checked in and everything settled (turn on the AC!) before setting out to explore the grounds.
People aren’t kidding – this place is insane. It’s massive, and yet somehow there aren’t golf carts to drive you from one area of the grounds to the other. I personally think this was an intentional way of making sure people feel like they’ve never seen the entire place and thus have a reason to keep coming back. Well that nonsense doesn’t work on us! We find a map and we make sure we see the entire place (over two days). I must say it’s pretty exhausting though – the place is just huge and there’s soooo much to do.
There are numerous aquariums onsite, which we check out but don’t spend too much time on. After all, we prefer to see marine life in the wild rather than behind glass. In addition to the aquariums, there are also lots of lagoons where different marine life lives. These are natural looking, well lagoons, offering different environments based on the creatures that are living there. These are actually pretty neat as you can see the animals from above (versus through glass), and there are some species we’ve never seen before including saw fish and leopard sharks. There is one main area where much of the lagoons are located, but there are even more scattered throughout the resort at various locations. Realistically, you could probably spend a couple days just looking at the different aquariums and lagoons.
We of course only have two days, though, and make sure to keep pace accordingly. Our main focus is on Aquaadventure. We feel that is really where we get our money’s worth – and the fun reason why we came. There are two main areas of water slides along with the longest rapid river (e.g. lazy river for the adventurous). There is of course a regular lazy river and countless pools or kid’s areas as well. We focus on the water slides – managing to get 9 rides in before they close for the evening. That’s as good as you often get spending an entire day at the water park, and we only had a few hours. We’re exhausted but feeling pretty good about our day one activities.
The next day we focus on our favorite water slides and two slides that we didn’t get the chance to go down. One of which is the famous slide that shows up in all the brochures – you rocket straight down an open slide from a Mayan temple and go through an aquarium of sharks. I really prefer slides where I get to be on the comfort of an inner tube, but of course we can’t not go down this slide. We find a time when the wait is surprisingly short and get in line. It’s very, very fast and you definitely don’t get to actually see any of the sharks in the aquarium as you zip by. It’s pretty fun though and didn’t really hurt my back like I expected it would.
After we are sufficiently wore out from all the water slides and more exploring of the resort grounds, we decide to call it a day. We head back to the boat to let Monster have some fun and get cleaned up. We’re splurging on a fancy night out with dinner and gambling at the on-site casino. Within the resort is a fancy restaurant called “Nobu” that Matt really wants to eat at if we can. He previously ate at a Nobu location in Malibu while at a conference and raved about the food (as do most others). We don’t have reservations, but an earlier walk by indicated that there is a bar, which we hope takes walk-ins. Lucky us – they do!
We actually are able to sit down at a cozy booth table in the bar area to enjoy dinner. The menu is Japanese inspired, which isn’t really my cup of tea, but I find a couple meat and chicken skewer type dishes that look good to order. Matt adds in sushi and a shrimp tempura dish, and we top it off (or rather start off) with an order of shishito peppers. These are generally a sweet pepper, but about 1 in every 10 turns out to be hot. It’s like Russian roulette with peppers, and is unbelievably fun! We had a blast taking turns testing out the peppers and then ranking them around the plate in order from hottest to not. Such a small thing, but add in a swanky atmosphere and good wine – it’s practically a full experience in itself. The main food was delicious by no surprise – though I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I even liked the shrimp tempura, which as many of you know, I don’t like any type of fish or shrimp. Quite the compliments to the chef.
After we finish eating dinner, we venture out into the large casino and play some actual Roulette. The Roulette table buy-ins were a bit rich for my blood, so I convince Matt to play the new virtual Roulette that many casinos are starting to install. It works just like a table with an actual wheel that spins each round, and multiple players can bet. The difference is the whole process is automated, and each player places their bets on an electronic screen versus on an actual table. It’s just as fun, you can sit down while playing, and the buy in is always much less. What’s not to love?
Atlantis is a huge splurge for us – since you know, we haven’t had a vacation in a while (…kidding!). It is totally worth it for this one time, though. We have an absolute blast!
