We had a restful night at the Berry Islands Club moorings, the pups got a walkabout in the morning before we left, and we dropped the mooring at 0815 and headed for New Providence. Since we had spent more time in Nassau than we really wanted to the last time we came through, we opted to visit neighboring Rose Island just to the east. The island is narrow, about 3/4 mi wide at the widest, but the northern shore is predominately beach with pinkish sand. Tour boats from Nassau make the 4 nm run to the island to bring cruise tours for day trips, but there is plenty of room to anchor. The anchorage is a bit rolly, our first night was a bit bumpy but the second was much calmer.
We joined Mystic Moon in the anchorage, and Monday morning dinghied into shore and toured the island. There are a handful of homes on the island, one on the southern shore was new construction, essentially complete, but never occupied. From all appearances, the home has been standing in that condition for several years. With no utilities on the island, each dwelling must be self-sufficient. Typically, there will be an outbuilding or two to house a generating plant, perhaps a 500 gallon oil tank to fuel it, and many have solar panels to supplement. They truly live “off the grid”. Other development around the salt pond on the west end near our anchorage consisted of extensive construction of sea walls around the salt pond, lots of reinforced concrete structure, and a large cut started through the coral ridge to the south toward the deep water of the banks, but the cut was not opened, and construction was stopped at some point, and the site abandoned. One of the striking impressions of our time in the Bahamas is the prevalence of development that appears to have started with grand plans, and then just fizzled out, and progress simply halted.
Our tour of the island covered about a third of the island, about a 4 mile trek. Good exercise! The dogs took advantage of the proximity to water, frequently making side trips to take a dip and cool off. The down side being the presence of the nasty sand burrs, jaggy little balls of spikes that embed themselves into dog paws (or people feet!). A telltale limp or the elevated paw is a call for help to extricate the painful jaggers, usually complicated by a layer of sand, but no lasting effects. Out & done!
We decided to take the dink into Nassau to get some minor provisions, some phone minutes, and check in with Celebrate. The 4.5 mile trip takes about 35 minutes, the ride was on the rough side, and a bit wet, but the water’s warm and the sun was shining. We visited a bit, and found two other Selene’s in the marina. Luc and lady friend on Innu and Mike & Renee on Blue Grotto. We couldn’t stick around too long as we wanted to get back to the anchorage before the light began to fade. The weather was predicted to deteriorate over the next few days, so we decided to shove off late in the morning and make the 30-some mile run to Allan’s Cay, the upper end of the Exuma chain.
