We’ve spent the last 2 nights on anchor in the town of Rock Sound. It’s one of a few anchorages on Eleuthera where you have protection from any wind direction.
When we first arrived in Nassau another boater told us about My Island WiFi. It’s a company that rents MiFi devices by the week or month to tourists. Unlimited, un-throttled, high speed internet using the local cell towers.
Typically, they ship the device to your US address and you ship it back from your US address. They do offer pickup, but only on Grand Bahama or the Berry Islands, both locations are out of the way for us.
I called to see if there was any way to get one of their devices. Good news is they ship to any airport in the Bahamas. Bad news, due to the holiday’s they’re out of devices. They said they’d contact me as soon as one was available in country. I kept contacting them every couple of days to see if one came in.
Finally, one was returned. As for getting it to us, they put it on a Bahamian Air flight. Freeport to Nassau to Rock Sound International airport. The plane was scheduled to arrive at 4:30, so we’d still have sun to make it back to the boat.
I was surprised to see the airport has a dingy dock too. It was about a mile away from the town anchorage, so it didn’t take us long to get there. We arrived early with the hopes of meeting with immigration to extend our stay.
In Bahamian style, the immigration officer said were here too early. They wont extend stays until you have less than a week left.
The flight from Nassau was delayed almost an hour. When it finally arrived, parcels were the last items processed. It was getting dark and the no-see-ems were coming out in force. That was probably the fastest we got the dingy untied and launched. I did bring navigation lights for the dingy, but forgot to turn the anchor light on at Odyssey.
We found our way back, dropped everything off and the took the dingy to one of the town restaurants for dinner. They’re big on frying things around here, and this is one of the few places that actually grill fish, so I wasn’t going to pass that up.
The next day we went grocery shopping. Oh my, the prices keep going up as we get further from Nassau. A bag of Tostitos corn chips was $7.50. A can of DelMonte corn was $3.50. It’s time to start fishing or try catching one of the wild chickens running around town.
After shopping, we went to the Ocean Hole park. It’s a park with a large blue hole that’s on the edge of town. There are picnic tables, trails to the cliffs, and a ladder to climb out. It looks like the stone quarries I used to go swimming in, except it’s salt water and the fish are more colorful. Green turtles instead of snapping turtles.
I read the fish enjoy being fed, but they didn’t like the crackers I had brought. Another family at the park had bread, which the fish were all over. Picky eaters, I guess.
Today we head off to a marina for 4 days of unlimited power and air conditioning to dry the boat out. It’s humid here and at night the temperatures drops down to the dew point. There is salt in the air and we have cotton everything that suck up the moisture. Everything feels damp all the time. We like running the air conditioner regularly to dry the boat out.
Kurt & Sue Sail 