Bahamas Nassau 25 February 2010

Wandered around Nassau with its houses neatly painted in pastel shades - with a distinct preference for pink. The tourist trade seems to be doing well despite the economic downturn with a daily influx of cruise ships - we have seen up to 4 ships docked at the same time. The town is very much oriented to this trade with many shops selling the usual momentoes and duty free clothes, watches, electronics, booze etc.

Yesterday was another rainy day but we braved the weather to walk over the bridge to Paradise Island and visit the Atlantis Hotel complex. The whole complex is imaginatively designed with its own pastel coloured shopping area, Mega-Yacht Marina and the hotel itself where one can freely roam through the foyers and casino - the latter having an enormous collection of one armed bandits, Black Jack and Craps tables - with lots of people using them. One of the most interesting features is the sunken foyer which is surrounded on 3 sides by an aquarium with floor to ceiling glass panels filled with many tropical fish of all sizes all swimming through the recreated sunken ruins of the fabled Atlantis. For a fee one can snorkel through the aquarium.

Very fortunately for Dutch Link and crew, Jeannette was awoken by the increase and change in in wind direction at 0430hrs this morning - to find that we were dragging at quite a speed toward the Island Supply Boat dock. We were up in time to fend off another anchored sail boat that we dragged past and to start the engine and raise anchor before disaster struck. Many other boats were experiencing the same problem so it was getting quite hectic circling around in the dark in a NWerly gusting over 30 knots. We took the easy way out and docked at the partly free fuel dock. Unfortunately we were later asked to move on as the dock was used by quite large commercial boats and we were preventing them from docking. So with the help of several fellow yachties we managed to extricate ourselves from the dock to which we were pinned by the strong onshore wind and reanchored at 1000hrs. Luckily the anchor seems to be well dug - however, it was dug in before with our usual 2500 rpm in reverse and we still dragged when the southerly wind changed to a strong NWerly. People say the bottom here is foul with all sorts of rubbish - old car parts, shopping trolleys etc so it would be possible to snare something and then unsnare when the wind changes.