Tag Archives: Nassau

Sights, if not sounds, in Nassau

I had a great day yesterday wandering around Nassau from our marina to tourist area where the cruise ships dock as well as an area where the locals hang out to play checkers and dominoes.    Nassau is an area of great contrast from the run down to the glitzy.  First, this is a much better shot of The Abby.  What a nice boat.  Very powerful machine.

As I walked the two or so miles into town I passed Potters Cove where locals have put up shacks to serve food and sell conch.  The area, locals and their wares are very colorful.

The small shacks are lined up cheek to jowl accompanied by the din of small generators humming away to keep the lights on.  Quite a sight and plenty aromatic.

They aren’t too concerned about putting fenders out to keep their boats from bumping into each other.
A favorite pastime is dominoes which is more of a contact sport given the way that they slap the tiles down. They are very enthusiastic.
Conch are everywhere, stacked up on counters waiting to be carved up into dinner.

Some vendors clean up the empty ones and they are very nice. I need to get one of these to take home.  They are bigger than they look, with some measuring a foot across.

Some of the “items” for sale are not quite as appetizing though, like these land crabs. Imagine that they are nearly a foot across. They would be a great prop for an Indiana Jones movie.  Imagine yourself in a cave, in the dark, claws clicking away… You get the picture.

I tried hard to imagine what sort of recipe these would go into.   Cook’s Illustrated, help!!!For dinner we had grouper and picked it up at a road side stand where local fisherman displayed their wares.  For an extra $5 they will clean if for you.  It was a bit unsettling to watch how aggressively they went at the fish with a machete.  Scales  flying everywhere accompanied by a constant dialogue from his buddies dissecting his skills.  I was impressed.

A bit further down where the cruise ships dock, the environment is much different with high end fashion the norm. No dried fish here.

Well, that was yesterday and now it’s Thursday morning and raining steadily.  I am told that this is not normal weather at all according to Bob, the owner of The Abbey.  In the 8 seasons that they have spent here they have had more rain this winter than the total of their last seven years visiting the Bahamas.

With regards to our departure, we had expected to leave here on Friday or Saturday but now its looking more like Sunday. as there is a low and unsettled weather that just won’t budge.   For the short term, I just hope that the rain stops so we can do a bit more exploring later today.

Where’s Pandora? Perhaps better to say where’s Bob?

For some months I have been looking for a service that will allow me to provide real time location information here on where Pandora is at any given point.  This will be particularly valuable when Brenda and I head south in the fall so that family and friends can follow us as we make our way south for the winter.   Of course, the natural question that some to mind is “why would we want to follow your trip?”.  Well, that’s simple, because you can…

There are a number of services available that will track progress and I settled on a unit called SPOT.  This is a nifty device that’s just a few inches long and sends a signal to low orbiting satellites to keep tabs on where the unit is at any given time.  With an update every 10 minutes when it’s turned on, it’s an amazingly simple way to keep in touch.  This is an amazingly affordable service and you can click here to learn more about this remarkable device.  Even more interesting is this overview of how the unit works.  As simple as the device looks, it’s part of a system that looks REALLY COMPLICATED and EXPENSIVE.

This video gives a good overview of the tracking function.  What an awesome gadget!!!

“Spot” will be aboard Pandora most of the time but for now it will be with me as I head this coming week for Nassau Bahamas to help my friend Bob bring back his South African Islander 56′The Abby, to Norwalk CT.  At least, that’s where I think we are going.  Not sure as the boat spends a lot of time in Newport.  Well, I guess that will learn more when I head there on Tuesday.  I know Bob from my years as a member of the Norwalk Yacht Club and also as member of The Corinthians.

There will be a total of four of us on this trip and we expect to leave on the 18th or 19th of May and will arrive at some point late the following week.   As I understand it, we will head out into the Gulf Stream and ride it north.  This will allow us to make the trip as quickly as possible given the fact that the “stream” moves north at several knots which will give us a boost in speed as we head up the coast.

Anyway, back to the issue of tracking our progress.  With SPOT aboard, there will be a real time record of our progress as we head north.   I won’t turn the unit on until we leave the harbor except briefly when I get to Nassau to post an initial position on my SPOT page.  You will have to pan out on the map to get a better feel for where we are as the link defaults to a close up view.

It should be fun and I hope that you will enjoy “ride” with me.

More to come.