After a week of bad weather in Palm Cay Marina, we started to get a little bit stir crazy. So when Demario offered us a discount on a car rental, we jumped at it! Mike and I combined forces with Robert and Rhonda on Eagle Too and we spend an entire day playing tourist.

I hadn’t really felt any need to see Nassau. I’d always heard it is crowded and even dangerous. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the historic district is also very beautiful. We started our tour at the Queen’s staircase, 102 feet of stairs and a narrow canyon carved into a limestone mountain as an escape route from the city fortifications. This morning, athletes were using the steep climb as an outdoor gym…sort of like Red Rocks in Colorado.

Fort Fincastle at the top of the hill provides amazing views of Nassau and the harbor.

Quite a bit of colonial architecture remains, hosting government buildings and businesses. This is Government House, the home of the governor of the Bahamas, Marguerite Pindling.

The library is housed in the hexagonal former jail building. They store books in the cells.

I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the beautiful Greycliff Hotel and gardens. When we win the lottery, I’m staying here for a week!

In addition to the lovely hotel, restaurant, and gardens, the Greycliff Complex includes several artisan shops selling chocolates, wine, and cigars hand-rolled on premises. They say they are better than Cuban cigars. I think they all smell equally foul.

Colorful public art is everywhere in Old Town Nassau… no admission fee required.

I got it into my head that I wanted to eat lunch at Fish Fry. It’s not one particular restaurant (and not all the fish is fried!) but a cluster of casual, inexpensive eateries, shacks, and food trucks just off the bridge to Arawak Cay. You can try any type of Bahamian food here, and locals have their favorite shack, mostly named after the cook.

My friends humored me, and agreed to the fairly long walk in the heat to fish fry. I have to say, the people watching on the walk over was worth it!

As we approached Fish Fry, a tout with a sign grabbed us and started fast talking, ” You lookin’ for Fish Fry? Follow me to Fish Fry. I’ll take you right there!” It’s hard to resist the sales pitch, especially when your feet hurt and you are hot and thirsty. So we followed him into the nearest restaurant and ordered a drink. But then I had to put my foot down. I’d done my research, read reviews, and I’d be darned if we were going to act like cruise ship sheep and eat at the restaurant with the pushiest tout! I was going to eat at Goldie’s, gosh darn it!

So my long suffering friends paid for their drinks, got up and left the restaurant without ordering food, and followed me to Goldie’s. I’m glad we did! We sat out on the water overlooking a veritable mountain of queen conch shells and had a feast.

Rashid showed us how he cleans and preps the conch before cooking.

But I have to admit, by this point in our Bahamas travels, I was a little bit conched out. Is it ok to admit it? So instead I ate some amazing grilled snapper with vegetables and the signature cocktail – Goldie’s Call A Cab. What is it with the Bahamas and green cocktails?

In an effort to see how the other half lives, we decided to crash Atlantis for the afternoon. Here we are driving up the the front door (basically NO ONE actually drives to Atlantis, we might have given ourselves away with that one)

Here’s the marina we didn’t stay at, because it’s crazy expensive. We met folks at Compass Cay who stayed at Atlantis Marina for two nights and the bill was $850.

We enjoyed exploring the public areas of this resort, particularly the Atlantis themed aquarium. I was obsessed with getting a selfie with an eagle ray… not entirely successfully.

And …. much better fish pictures, no Jenn!

Our last attempt to pretend we are resort people, not cruisers, was a stroll through the casino. The highlight is definitely the Chihuly glass sculptures. I got in trouble taking the first picture. I guess I wandered into one of the gambling pits… oops!

So we walked our legs off, ate great food, and enjoyed amazing colorful art, all for the cost of a $60 rental car split between four people. Not bad at all! This might have been the best value sightseeing tour in Nassau that day!

I’d heard great things about the Highbourne Cay marina since Florida. From Jack who ran the fuel dock at the Marathon Marina, to our friends Pat and Melana, to strangers who we met in various ports. So on our slow trip north through the Exumas, I was excited to spend a few nights here to explore.

After almost three months of traveling with Orion and SE of Disorder, our paths finally diverged for good at Highbourne. They headed straight back to Florida in a single, long 34 -hour passage! While Sanitas planned to slow roll the return. Yep. We’re obviously in denial about this adventure coming to a close. We celebrated our successful cruising season over dinner at the high-end Xuma restaurant (where a Kalik beer costs $8) and told our favorite stories and relived our best adventures. I feel that our lives are forever intertwined after this season of highs, lows, and helping each other through challenges both big and small. Goodbye Chris, Stan, Laura, and Bob! Fair winds and following seas until we meet again!

The next morning dawned loud. It was the annual Poker Run… a sponsored event of around 100 speed boats traveling from Nassau through the Exumas, complete with loud music, beer drinking, and all the accompanying shenanigans. From our anchorage just west of Highbourne, boats zoomed past so close that the wake almost sent a wave over Sanitas’ stern. Unsettling and uncomfortable, we hailed the marina and begged to be allowed to enter our slip before the usual check-in time.

Entering a marina is always interesting. This time we were the only sailboat, and Sanitas was the smallest boat by an order of magnitude. Add the Poker Run and several mega yachts queued up waiting for the fuel dock, and space was a bit tight in Highbourne marina. Capt. Mike made it look easy though, coasting to a stop perfectly positioned in our slip – one line thrown to the dock master and we were home for the next few nights. Only afterwards did he confess that we had coasted in completely on incoming current, with the engine in neutral, and therefore had no steering ability whatsoever. It’s better to be lucky than good, right?

Highbourne is one of the most expensive marinas that we’ve stayed at this year. I was uncomfortable about it at first, being always mindful of our cruising budget and calculating trade offs of what’s worth spending money on. But once we started to explore, I realized that the safe slip was the least of the benefits of staying at Highbourne. The real value of a stay here is the chance to roam the private and exquisitely maintained island at your leisure, almost as if we were resort people instead of sailboat cruisers. And our fees are also supporting a bird conservation area on the north side of the island. Sign me up! I was a bit sad to observe that many of the mega yacht guests never left their floating hotels / dance clubs to explore. Well, that meant Mike and I had most of the stunning beaches all to ourselves!

The same family has owned this island since the 1950s and has invested a great deal into the gardens and accommodations. While walking or biking around the island, visitors find frequent “surprises”; beach huts and cabanas, lounge chairs and swings, and even an open air yoga studio / gym at the highest point of the island.

The resort staff lives in a small village within the complex, and maintains an organic farm raising chickens and goats and grown produce for the Xuma restaurant. I had a lovely conversation with mama goat.

I wish I had more photos of the gardens and beaches of Highbourne Cay to share, but….. the rain started. If the theme of the first two months of our cruising season was Northerly Winds, the theme of the last month was Tropical Rains. Believe it or not, Mother Nature doesn’t keep a day planner, and hurricane season doesn’t necessarily start on June 1st. This year, the crazy winds and rains started in May, making weather watching imperative, and route planning difficult. We made the best of it by plugging into shore power and running the air conditioner, and by spending time under the many shelters on the island watching the rain from lounge chairs. Not such a bad way to pass the time!