With the wind due to come from the North we headed into Nassau harbour to get some protection, we headed in past the 6 cruise ships that are visiting Nassau today 😱, under the bridges and managed to anchor at the east end of the harbour not far from where we were in 2012 and 2013 when we spend time here with Vicki, a school friend of mine.

There is a sixth cruise ship moored behind the big one on the end dock! 

The harbour has got a lot busier since then and there is constant wake from the numerous boats that fly through the harbour at full throttle but we were expecting this so aren’t complaining although we did moan about it a few times 🤣.

We spent a week in Nassau, met up with Vicki, it's always so lovely to see her and catch up on her life here, we went for lunch a couple of times and stopped for a coffee on Paradise island - 3 cappachino cost $45 or £37 😱😱 without doubt the most expensive coffees I have ever bought or want to buy, but the company was worth it 😍.

  

The Cloisters 

 

Innamorata and The Folly - which belonged to Vicki’s mother in law when she was alive in the background.

We also went for a walk and were tourists for a day - we visited Fort Fincastle and the 64 Steps - can't believe we hadn’t been there before when we had visited 🫣 and of course made a couple of visits to the supermarket for fresh veg, milk and eggs - of course the prices were shocking but the locals have to pay the same whether they are rich or poor and there is poverty here, lots of derelict shops and properties, squalid shacks not far from the many multimillion $ homes, like in 2012 we saw people filling big water containers from a standpipe on the roadside.

The Queens Staircase was chiselled out of Limestone by free men of African decent in the 1870’s as a means of providing public access to the fort. 

Amazing root structure of one of the trees lining the path to the Queens Staircase 

Completed in 1793 Fort Fincastle was built to strategically protect Nassau along with five smaller batteries including one at Old Fort Bay, it was never attacked and remained an active Fort until1927.

 

There were a few days we stayed on board - going ashore would have been a very wet affair with the wind and chop in the harbour, as seems to be the theme this year - on one of these days Steve decided it was a good time to service the saloon hatch that had leaked on passage here, the hinges were semi seized - in keeping with things recently of course it didn't go well and we now have a hatch with no hinges as they broke 😱. Luckily it does up in each corner so it's actually more water tight now than it was with the hinges in situ! Steve did make some temporary hinges out of wire and terminals which work well so far and we can still open the window to get some air in the boat, unfortunately the window manufactures have said the hinges haven’t been used since 2016 and are obsolete so we will have to be creative and find a longterm solution which hopefully doesn’t involve a new hatch 😬. 

We were ready to leave a couple of days before we did, but the forecasts kept changing and there wasn’t a decent forecast to move on but a week here is enough so were off tomorrow  wind or no wind!!