The other side of “Nassau Island”

Third time is the charm for us making it to New Providence Island! New Providence is most famous for the huge cruise ship terminal in Nassau. In fact, until a few weeks ago, I thought that Nassau was an entire island – it’s not, just a city. New Providence has a lot to offer on the remainder of the island that isn’t overrun with tourists and Diamond International stores.

Old Fort Bay

On our way over from Chub Cay, we were deciding between anchoring at West Bay and Old Fort Bay. Ultimately, we made our decision based on which I thought had good snorkeling nearby. This is ironic because the opposite actually had significantly better snorkeling and dive sites within dinghy ride distance (figures). We chose Old Fort Bay, though, and were overall still quite happy with our decision.

When we arrived late in the afternoon, we were dropping anchor at the same time as another catamaran. Nice – looking solid. It’s great to be the only boat in a harbor, but it also makes you wonder why you’re the only idiots in the harbor. Having a single companion or two makes you feel like you made an intelligent choice in where to drop anchor. Shortly thereafter, another power cat came in and then a sailboat and then a mega yacht and then some more. At one point, there were 3 mega yachts, 2 personal cruise ships (e.g. mega, mega, mega yachts), 2 monohulls, 3 catamarans, and a few small power boats. Apparently, we made a good choice.

The anchorage was set with a backdrop of very nice homes, a long, gorgeous beach, and a small resort. We were able to take the dinghy into the beach for Monster’s daily walks, without any issues. It was the softest sand I have ever walked on. Yes, I just used “soft” to describe sand – it was so unusual and amazing on our feet! One day, Monster and I dared to take the paddle board to shore. We made it there and back alive, but we didn’t try that again – winds 20-30 knots are not favorable for paddle boarding much distance.

Lending a helping hand

Speaking of strong winds and paddle boards – we got to play hero for a morning and help out a nice family from the resort who got caught up in the strong winds while paddling around the bay. A father, son and daughter had taken out two paddle boards and a kayak from the resort nearby to enjoy the large bay area. It was especially windy that morning though with 30-35+ knot gusts of wind – yikes! As some gusts took them farther out into the bay (and past our boat) we heard a young voice crying for help. We immediately ran outside to see the son kayaking towards our boat asking for a helping hand. He was able to paddle up to our stern and hop onboard with us! Such a smart kid to stay calm and find help in that stressful of a situation.

We launched our dinghy into the water, got his kayak tied up behind it, and head over towards his dad who is already paddling in the direction of our boat. He also climbs in and we head back to the resort beach to drop off the kayak and paddle board. Even our dinghy (with a pretty nice little motor) is struggling against the strong wind at this point. After making a quick drop off, we head back to a small, private beach to pick up the daughter. She and her dad had previously made it over to the small beach in order to avoid being swept out further into the bay – smart move! We tie up the paddle board, all hop in and head back to the resort beach one more time. Monster quickly makes friends and hops from lap to lap, completely enjoying all the excitement and dinghy ride.

After everyone is safely back on (the correct) shore, we go about our daily beach walk with Monster. It felt great to be able to lend a helping hand, and we really enjoyed meeting that sweet family (despite less than ideal circumstances). We have received so much help from others in the cruising community, and were happy to pass some forward!

As a side note, that resort should never have offered paddle boards to guests in those kind of winds. When you’re on vacation, you have some level of trust in resorts to have your safety in mind. The average person would never consider to check the wind speeds – unless you live on a boat. Then I suspect you spend the rest of your life checking wind speed and direction daily.

Snorkeling Goulding Cay

As I mentioned earlier, we initially chose to spend the first night at Old Fort Bay because there was supposed to be some good snorkeling at the nearby Love Beach. There was not. Or at least not that we could find. Not sure if we have too high of expectations or were just never able to find it. Feeling a bit defeated, but recognizing how much daylight was still left, we begin making our way west towards other areas that we read were supposed to have dive sites. Unfortunately the wind was not in our favor (is it ever?), and it made for quite a rough dinghy ride. It also made it impossible to get towards the south end of the island which is supposed to have the best dive sites. Yes, all of these are closer to West Bay – my bad.

We come near the spot where we believe there to be a small wreck and see a dive boat (full of snorkelers) is already there. Not wanting to crowd them, we continue on to a few other potentials – including Jaws Beach where scenes from (one of) the Jaws movies was filmed. Ultimately, nothing really looked like what we were after, though. We decide to make one last ditch effort, heading out even further (into pretty large swells) towards Goulding Cay which is just off West Bay (yes, I know). We see a couple dive boats are there – a good sign for what’s underwater. One of the boats is collecting its divers and getting ready to leave. As it does, we notice that there is a mooring ball. Awesome, we tie up our dinghy to that – easy, peasy. Now we can both back roll off the dinghy and into the crystal clear water.

It was totally worth the trip. Gorgeous, healthy, fairly large coral stuck up for as far as you could see with a soft sandy spot off to one side. As soon as we entered the water, we were greeted by a very large, friendly appearing barracuda. Several medium to large fish swam by and not too long after, we spotted a reef shark (a respectable size, but not intimidating). Then, we spotted a crazy large, bright blue fish bigger than any fish I have ever seen (except maybe a large grouper in Cozumel)! I have no idea what it was – looked a bit similar to a parrot fish. I sure wish we could have gotten some better video of him – wow. Our shark friend stuck around nearby for most of the time, but not too close – perfect, polite shark behavior. It was possibly one of the best snorkel sites we have been to. It’s really more of a dive site, but at only 20-30 feet of water, it makes for perfect snorkeling.

Sandy Point

We stayed at Old Fort Bay for a couple nights. The next day after our snorkel adventure, we must have been feeling confident because we decided to travel an even further distance the opposite direction towards a random destination of Sandy Point Marina. It was supposed to be a small, local marina in a cute neighborhood with colorful houses lining numerous waterways. Good news – the cuteness did not disappoint! Bad news – the security guard wouldn’t let us take our dinghy inside. Give and take.

Instead we had to beach our dinghy at a nearby public beach and then walk over into the Sandy Point neighborhood. There was a gas station, pharmacy, post office, a few restaurants and even a “sip and paint” shop – it truly had everything.  We grabbed a couple Kalik (local beers) at the liquor store inside the gas station and walked around the cute American 50’s inspired streets. After snapping a few photos, though, we decided we should start heading back before dark. We had still promised Monster a sunset beach walk since she didn’t get to go with us on that little adventure.

The wind turns north

On our third morning at Old Fort Bay, we wake up to a lot of rocking and rolling – and not the good kind. I get up and see that our bow is facing north, straight out into the open Atlantic. My stomach is saying, not good.

Tangent: There is almost no anchorage that provides protection from winds in every direction. If you stop and picture a piece of land and then wind blowing from each direction, it’s pretty easy to determine from which directions of wind you would be protected. This is not taking into consideration swell and current which can throw a wrench in things – but we mostly focus on wind at this point, being novices and having a stable catamaran. Our anchorage was inside a horseshoe shaped bay, so we had protection from all directions except north. As soon as the wind started coming out of the north, it was blowing across miles and miles of open, deep Atlantic ocean with nothing to block it or to stop waves from building. This is one of many reasons why it’s so important that we are checking the wind speed and directions constantly while living aboard. In this case, it just changed direction several hours sooner than expected, catching us off guard.

There were literally white caps in our anchorage – our cute little anchorage that had been (mostly) calm the rest of the time. After a couple hours waiting out storms passing through, I told Matt that we had to move whether it’s raining or not. We picked up our anchor and headed for a short but rough passage over to Nassau, where we planned to find protection inside the channel (next to all the cruise ships!)

Stay tuned to hear if Nassau is all the cruise lines promise it to be (based on our 100% biased opinions).