Monday, April 28, 2025, continued… After we’d had our fill of watching the pigs, we continued on towards town.
This was the tip of the anchorage that we were in, looking toward the anchorage closer to town.
We passed an ominous looking sunken vessel. We wondered what caused it to sink.
Continue readingSunday, April 27 — We got up at 0530 and untied from the dock at 0630, just as the sun was beginning to rise. It was high tide. Today was the new moon, so the tides were extra high/ low. We were grateful to have a little more water under the keel as we navigated the narrow channel out.
We were heading to an area called Staniel Cay, part of the string of tiny islands that make up the Exumas.
The sea conditions were okay. The 1 – 2 foot wind chop waves were sharp, hitting at 2 – 3 second intervals, and breaking. They were hitting us on the starboard. The motion was lurchy. Much to our frustration, the closet was squeaking like crazy like it does in head seas. In good news, there was no swell. It was a sunny day with scattered clouds.
Continue readingFriday, April 25 — Eric did not sleep well. The boat became grounded at low tide in the middle of the night and started making unusual motions. The strange motion kept him from sleeping. Christi and Keith slept through it.
Despite being tired, Eric was feeling motivated to get stuff done. While Christi and Keith did school, Eric dug out the parts he’d need for his projects. Many were in deep spaces that were difficult to access — just getting the parts out was a project in and of itself!
As soon as Christi and Keith were done with school, we headed out. It was near high tide when we left Kosmos.
We rented a car from the marina office. They charged $11 per hour and didn’t require us to refill the fuel we used. Eric found driving on the left hand side of the road in traffic required a lot more concentration than normal. And it was a little bit scary, particularly with making right hand turns.
Our first stop was an auto parts store to get oil, which was the farthest away from all of our errands — a 10-minute drive.
On Thursday, April 24 — We didn’t sleep well because a storm hit in the wee hours of the morning that woke us up. We did manage to go back to sleep, but it was still raining pretty hard when we got up for the day. We were pleased at our luck — the days we were in the park, the weather had been nice, and it turned icky on the day we were leaving.
The marina check out time was at 1100. Last night, we’d talked about possibly going back into the resort this morning to check out some of the places that we’d missed. Even if the weather had been nice, Keith and Christi woke feeling like they simply could not do any more walking. They were glad to be leaving.
Eric, on the other hand, was feeling full of energy as a result of anxiety. After that nightmare ride into Atlantis on Monday, he was anxious about leaving. Our destination was a marina on the southeast side of New Providence Island (the purple dot on the map below), and it had a narrow entrance channel with a couple of slight turns. He was having anxiety about navigating that channel.
We untied from the dock at 1045. We were pleased to see that traffic on the water was light. We realized that Monday had been the end of a holiday weekend — no wonder it had been so crazy! As a general rule, we try not to take Kosmos out on holiday weekends exactly because that is when it’s crowded with drunks who have no clue what they were doing.
We only made 4 knots in channel at 1650 RPM because the wind and current were both against us. We noted that the properties lining the water of Paradise Island looked very high end, most with private docks.
continued… This was far and away the most expensive marina we’d ever been to at $270 per night. However, it was actually a bargain because the slip included four tickets to the waterpark, and park tickets were $200 per day for non-Bahamians 13 and older. One of the perks of this marina was golf cart service, which we’ve never had before. Once we were ready to go, we called for a golf cart on the radio, and a few minutes later one arrived at the boat to pick us up. Here were Eric and Keith getting off the boat.
on the golf cart drive, we noticed some large, dark jellyfish in the water. The driver told us there were a lot of jellyfish here. He dropped us off at the edge of the enormous big pinkish building. We noticed some large, dark jellyfish in the water, and the driver told us where there was a ticket counter. The driver said we could skip the ticket counter and walk through the hotel to the waterpark; that we only need to show our marina keys to get into the park. Once inside, we could get wristbands from the customer service kiosks where they hand out towels. The wristbands would get us onto the rides.
We entered into what we thought was the hotel lobby. Nope. It was a small, high end shopping mall.
