January 25 Royal Island to Nassau

We had the anchor up at 06:50. Cardea did too and we left Royal Island behind.

The sunrise was beautiful out on the Northeast Providence channel. 🙂

It was a very warm morning. The temperature was 28C (82F) and very humid. The winds were SSW and blowing up to 22 kn. It was a bit lumpy and rolly at first but certainly nothing at all like the first of our crossings from Lake Worth to the Bahamas. After we were on the water for a couple of hours, we could see clouds ahead of us and all of a sudden we looked over and saw a rainbow. There had been rain somewhere. Then a few minutes later, we went through a squall. And man did it rain! It rained hard for a good 10 minutes. But then the sun came out , the temperature was 26C but the humidity was gone. The winds had shifted to the WSW so we pulled out the jib and motorsailed for quite a while.

The water was not as deep as when we crossed from the Abacos to Eleuthera. There, we had depths of 15,000 ft. On this crossing we only saw depths of 7,700 on the chart, but it certainly was that beautiful ink blue colour. We did not see any dolphins or flying fish but we did see a couple of cruise ships heading towards Nassau.

As always on these ocean crossings, there is not a lot to see but water. 🙂 But the things I’ve mentioned are captioned below:

The rainbow; unfortunately it was almost faded when we noticed it

The squall with the rainstorm

Cruise ship

Motorsailing through the deep blue ocean

The beautiful ink coloured water

A nice calm day; where the water meets the sky

Another cruise ship

Finally we got a glimpse of land. It’s Rose Island

And then; Paradise Island

As we got closer; Rose Island

And a better glimpse of Paradise Island

Cruise ships at port

Entrance in to the Nassau Harbour

Looking over to the beach on Paradise Island

As we entered the harbour, we saw four cruise ships

Actually we saw the two cruise ships that we noticed out on the ocean today. You have to call and ask for permission to enter the Nassau Harbour and we heard one ship’s Captain calling. He said he had a staff of 1500 and 4500 passengers on board. It was the Norwegian Bliss

Got a photo of the front and back of the ship for the grandkids

The other cruise ship we saw out on the ocean; The MSC Seaside

Straw Market; where the folks from the cruise ships shop

Passing by Atlantis on Paradise Island

More of Paradise Island

Under the bridges that connect Nassau to Paradise Island

We stopped at the marina for fuel and to fill our water tanks. The wind had really picked up and it was rough getting off the dock. We motored away from the marina and set the anchor close by in the anchorage at 15:20. Once again we were thankful for the good day on the water and the safe crossing.

Some of our views in the anchorage:

Cardea at anchor