Saturday, March 13, 2010

Sailing in the Bahamas



Two members of the CYC (Brian Bourn and myself) just got back from an exciting sailing adventure. We spent a week in the Bahamas (New Providence, Paradise Island, Rose Island, Eleuthera) on Quintessent, a 45' yacht owned by Minnesotan Capt. Jay Luck.
We landed in Nassau on March 4th. and spent the first two nights there. We visited Paradise Island and the amazing aquarium located inside the Atlantis Hotel, had some great Bahamian food at a local restaurant, had a yoga class and an amazing vegetarian meal at the Yoga center on Paradise Island. At night we anchored Quintessent in the channel between New Providence and Paradise islands. We finally left Nassau on Saturday morning and reached Rose Island where we went snorkeling (there is a magnificent reef there), then we explored the island. Brian, Lori (the Captain's wife) and I found some coconuts and spent quite some time trying to figure out how to 'peel' them (get rid of the outer layer) - we managed to bring a few back to the boat, they were delicious! The next day we set sails to reach our first destination: Glass Window on Eleuthera - approximately 30 miles NE of Nassau. We sailed for about 3 hours with winds on the nose, tacking every half hour. We then decided to motor the rest, in order to arrive to Glass Window before dark. The next day we sailed all the way to Governor's Harbour - Eleuthera largest town. 20 miles of comfortable sailing, with winds of 10-15 knots. At some point we saw a school of dolphins and decided to get closer to them to possibly take some pictures - the gentle animals were very cooperative and decided to play under our bow for about 15 minutes: absolutely amazing! We spent the last couple of days between Governor's Harbour and Hatchet Bay that we reached after an exhilarating leg downwind. On Thursday (March 11th) we got a ride from Hatchet Bay to Eleuthera North airport where we tried the famous 'conch salad', a Bahamian specialty made with sliced raw conch marinated in pinapple and lime juice - delicious! just before catching our flight back.