We thought we had anchored in the perfect location to get a peaceful night, but boy were we wrong! The boat bounced all over the place and we ended up having the most restless night of the whole trip. Ok, part of the restlessness was probably due to everything nearing its end, but still, it wasn’t a very good night! We got up slightly more tired than we were used to, and started preparing ourselves and the boat for the last leg of our trip: sailing back to Nassau.
Going Downwind!
All our previous sailing had been upwind (against the wind as opposed to in the other direction, down with the wind), but now we finally got to do some downwind sailing. The experience was dramatically different and I was happy that Charlotte got to do that as well.
The joy lasted for a while but then the wind died down, leaving us with almost no power in the sails. The waves from astern where unfortunately still there, though, rocking the boat around and making the rigging and sails squeak and rattle while doing so.
We did that for a while, but when the speed dropped down to about 1.5 knots we gave up and turned on the engine.
Our Last Wonderful Encounter
We were motoring nicely along, maybe an hour away from Nassau and Palm Cay Marina. I was preparing the docking lines when I suddenly saw it.
“There’s a dolphin!!! It just jumped across our bow!”, I shouted to Charlotte and leaped to the engine controls to put the engine in neutral.
“It really was a dolphin!”, I said.
We scanned the sea in all directions to try to find it.
“Yes! I saw it jumping over there!”, Charlotte shouted after just a short while.
And that was it. We didn’t see any more of it and it didn’t come to swim along with our boat (like they do in all those videos we’ve seen).
But it was our very first dolphin encounter in the wild, and it really felt very special to us.
Back in Nassau
We had little wind so docking at the fuel harbour went nicely. We were greeted by one of the Navtours’ captains, filled the fuel tanks, and then finally moved the boat back to its own slip.
“Thank you for the trip”, I said to Charlotte and kissed her. She kissed me back, smiled and said the same.
Later that evening we took a taxi to downtown Nassau. Saw huge cruise ships leaving the harbour. Met the “Conch Man” (eating conch has the same effect as Viagra, we were told!). Ate strange but good food (yes, I ate conch) at an interesting restaurant called Lukka Kairi.
As aperitives, we ordered a Bahama Mama for Charlotte and a Bahama Papa to me.
Cheers and thank you! It was a wonderful vacation.
