Christmas in Nassau

We quite like Nassau. This is our third time here, but of course the first time on our own boat. We are anchored right in the middle of all the goings on, we see the cruise ships come and go, watch the super yachts come in, the local fishing boats and ferry boats, they all parade right past our spot. Of course it gets a bit "rolly" at times, because most don't observe the "no wake" rule and blast full speed, or at least almost full speed, past us. Meanwhile, we got our VHS on channel 16, and it's like watching TV, except it's just sound, and very entertaining. Some boats get yelled at for speeding, but only if they speed past the fancy, expensive yachts, us cruisers, nobody cares about. Also people hail one another on channel 16, then say "go up one", or 72, or something like that. So then you quickly change to that channel and eavesdrop into their conversation, it's like the lurkers on FB!! Today we heard one dive boat guy ask another dive boat guy if his lady had a muffin tin as his lady was looking for one. Loads of fun, really. We are so tired from our recent crossing, we happily don't move off the boat for days, just sit and watch. Eventually though, we feel the urge to go and explore a bit, and we do.We lower our dinghy, and off we go. We go down to the main docks downtown, very busy, there are 4 cruise ships in town that day, and it shows. We soon leave, but before we do, we talked to a local girl as I had heard about a festival called "Junkanoo" and I wanted to find out a bit more about this. As she explains, we know immediately, that we don't want to miss this event. So off we go to buy tickets. Junkanoo is the biggest Bahamian celebration, it's a bit like carnival in Rio, held on Boxing day, and then again on New Year's day. When I say Boxing Day, it's really Boxing Night, as the festival starts at 12:01 AM on December 26th.
We also dingied over into the Atlantis marina, fancy-schmanzy, only multi million dollar yachts parked there, and here we come with our dinghy. However, they were real friendly, and the dock master allowed us to tie up the dinghy for a couple of hours while we went and checked out the casino at Atlantis. We went and gambled for a bit ($20.00 worth), got some free drinks (rum and coke!) and then went back "home".
We also were on the look out to buy some lobster for Christmas, and as luck would have it, I saw some fishermen cleaning their catch. So we stopped and got us two lobster tails, they weighed 1 lbs each!!! Well, you don't want to be stingy on Christmas, right?
On Christmas Eve, another Canadian cruiser came by our boat, inviting us to go for dinner on shore to celebrate together. Out of 10 boats anchored out, about 6-7 were Canadian! And most of them are from Quebec. We agreed, and had a lovely evening out, rare for us, as we mostly eat on the boat. Then on Christmas Day we cooked up our lobster tails, a very special treat. We ate early, as we needed to rest up for our upcoming nocturnal adventure, the Junkanoo. We slept for a couple of hours after dinner, got up at 11:00 PM, lowered the dinghy and motored over to the marina dinghy dock. (all this in the pitch dark, and it was quite windy as well). Then we walked downtown, to get to our seats just in time for the 12:01 start of the festival. It was so worth it, we enjoyed every minute. The parade took many hours, and was done by 5:30 AM. We didn't see too many tourist at the festival, and the Bahamians around us were very friendly and so proud to share this special event with us. Junkanoo is a big deal to them, it really is a labour of love, they spend all year getting ready for this. They take January off, and by February, they start on next years theme and costumes.
We made our way back to the boat, went to sleep and spent the next 2 days waiting out yet another cold front before we could make our way across the Yellow Bank and on to the Exumas. More next time!

A "day off" for Warren always means tinkering with parts and spares. Here he took the clean out valve for the water maker apart, he thought it was leaking, but really, it was fine all along. I guess he just misses his days as instrument tech and troubleshooting. No shortage of troubleshooting issues on the boat though, perfect place for a retired instrument tech!

Here we tied up our dinghy at the public dock in Nassau, we had to move out of the way so this big cat could dock as well....

This boat was also tied up, he was preparing fresh conch salad...

Sneaking into Atlantis marina....

.One of the many super yachts..

We drove our dinghy in between these two super yachts, notice the hired hand cleaning the windows ...

We are looking for lobster, and we found some!

Getting ready for Christmas, I am baking a Key Lime pie from scratch....thank you Kevin for a great recipe!

Christmas Eve with a bunch of Canadian Cruisers...

Christmas morning....I made Swiss Christmas cookies back home and brought them along. Also, missing my children, having coffee mugs with their names doesn't really cut it....