West Bay vs. Nassau

Nassau, probably the most well known city in the Bahamas. Cruise ships dock there, and people fly in and out of the airport there. Along with land lubbers vacationing in the Bahamas, many cruisers feel the need to stop in Nassau as well. Provisions are significantly cheaper in Nassau when compared to the prices in other Bahamas islands, but with a big city comes a host of problems as well.

First of all, Nassau Harbor is small and busy! There are cruise ships, cargo ships, and commercial traffic transiting the narrow harbor all the time! Then you have all the pleasure boats that are coming through as well. It is so busy and tight in there that you have to radio Nassau Harbor Control before entering the harbor on CH 09, as well as radio them before moving from one spot to another! If you are anchored, you may need to move if Harbor Control deems it necessary.  

If the tight quarters wasn't bad, the holding is. There is a strong current that rips through the harbor and has swept away all the good sand, leaving behind a hard pack that is difficult for an anchor to penetrate. Your anchor might hold well, but the guy ahead of you might start dragging at any moment! 

Aside from the poor holding and crowded conditions, there is also the problem of crime. In cruising guides, it warns that boat theft is a prevalent problem, and being on your vessel is not a deterrent to the thieves.  

With the strong current, bad holding, crowded conditions, and risk of theft, we decided to approach Nassau from a different angle. We anchored in West Bay, on the western edge of New Providence Island (the island which Nassau is built on). Here, we have plenty of room, little current, and great holding. We are surrounded by a natural park and a golf club, so crime is a distant memory. We can access Nassau by cab or shuttle, without having to risk our boat in the process, and we can also detach ourselves from the busy city by not going there.  

If you need to stop in Nassau, consider anchoring somewhere else and simply traveling a few miles over land to get there instead of risking your floating home. 

Cell Phones in the Bahamas

Cruising in the Bahamas is awesome! The islands are beatiful and the beaches are immaculate. The problem is communicating while you are in the Bahamas with friends and family back at home. While visiting here, you can enroll in a cell phone plan that will allow you to use your same phone number for $10 per day. This will include 500mb of data and a lot of minutes for international calling. $10 per day may seem acceptable for a weeks vacation, costing only $70 for the phone plan, but when you are cruising here for months, $10 per day becomes too expensive. 

The alternative is to get a local SIM card and plug it into your phone! BTC, the local cell phone carrier sells SIM cards that will give you data and minutes with a prepaid plan. The cards cost about $20 to start with a modest plan of several minutes and GB of data. Over the phone, or with the BTC app, you can add minutes and data to your phone as you use it up. 

The system works quite well. Through the BTC app, you can add money to your account from your credit card. After you have added the funds, you can then dial *203# to access the BTC options. The call will take you through several prompts where you can choose to buy minutes or data at various dollar values.  

Since we do a lot of uploading with our YouTube channel, we have opted for the most expensive but also largest data plan, where you can buy 15GB of data for only $35. This data is consumed both in upload as well as in downloads, so use it wisely! As the data gets low, simply add more money and then call *203# to add more data to your phone card. 

All of this is possible only if you have an unlocked phone that you purchased directly from the manufacturer. If your phone came as part of a contract with your carrier, you will not be able to switch out the SIM card with a BTC card. In that case, you can buy a prepaid cell phone here and simply add minutes or data to that phone while you are here. 

The coolest thing about a new SIM card is it gives you a local Bahamas phone number! 

Hatches and Portholes

While proper ventilation is critical to a happy cruising life, it is important to remember that not only air can pass through your hatches and portholes. 

The foredeck hatch is the most important hatch to maintain. This hatch is the furthest from the cockpit, so its situation often goes ignored. This hatch is also the closest to the bow, so it is the most likely to see ocean spray coming up and possibly into the forward cabin! 

As a rule, we always close the forward hatch when raising or lowering headsails. I simply loosen the struts that keep it open and let the lid fall closed. I do this not to keep water out, but to keep the sails and all their control lines from fouling the open hatch and torquing it. Sheets and downhauls have a tendency to loop around the open hatch and present a problem while raising the sail. By simply closing the hatch, all of these problems are minimized. 

Sadly, if you are going out in large seas, simply lowering the hatch will not suffice. A large wave over the bow will push a sheet of water over the deck. When this water reaches the unlocked hatch, it will force it open just enough to let water pour in through the hole. In our case, this pours right in on our V-berth, soaking the mattress and our pillows.  

Now, our rule is to dog the hatch down as well as close it when raising sails. If the weather seems settled and calm, the hatch can always be opened. But if the weather is rough, we don't have to "remember to dog the forward hatch" as we are holding on to the teeter totter motion of the boat in large seas. 

Natural Bottom Cleaning

While in the Bahamas, I noticed that our bottom is staying cleaner than normal. Usually, I need to give our hull a quick scrub down with a soft broom every week, and if I stretch it out, to two weeks, there will be fuzzy growth present.

We have now been in the Bahamas for a few weeks, and anchored for most of it. Being anchored and not sailing in warm tropical waters is a recipe for bottom growth, yet our bottom has maintained itself as clean as the day we launched it! 

I couldn't figure out why we were staying cleaner than usual, until one day I noticed a little friend hanging out under the boat. We had collected four remoras and they were eating the beginnings of bottom growth. These fish which are commonly seen attached to sharks and whales had attached themselves to the bottom of our hull and have been acting like natural vacuum cleaners, scrubbing our hull every day. 

Weather Fax Signal

When receiving weather fax, it is important to have a very clear and good signal. The image is generated via a series of pitches. One pitch for white, another pitch for black. If the pitches are not distinct or there is a lot of background noise, your image will be distorted.

A relatively clear signal will produce an image like this. Few hiccups and a generally legible image of the weather systems at work around us.

Wind noise, conversations in the boat, or just bad reception will produce something like this. You can still make out the general context of the fax, but it is not as clear or legible as when you have good signal. 

Now, bad reception and no time to calibrate your image as it prints onto your tablet will generate something like this. The image is offset, and it is barely legible. All you can really make out is that it's supposed to be a map! 

Be sure to calibrate your setup and take advantage of the test run that NOAA sends out at the start of the weather fax transmission. If you get a clear image at the beginning, then all the subsequent faxes will be clear as well.