After leaving the delights of Cape Canaveral we set off south to the Bahamas. The immediate objective was Great Styrup Cay. This is the Norwegian Lines private island where they dump you for a day to enjoy various nautical pursuits. Paragliding, snorkelling, kayaks, glass bottom boats, floats etc etc. On land you can rent clam shells and cabana to lie around in and consume drinks, food etc. This would all be great if it wasn’t windy, rainy and cold! Which it was. It was such a no go that the Captain cancelled the stop because the tenders couldn’t get us ashore. Instead we just drifted around for the rest of the day and made for Nassau.

Bahamas arrival

We got to Nassau around 6pm and tied up at the dock. Original plot was to have arrived the next morning. This meant we were able to get an early start the next morning for a stroll around this old town rich in early British colonial history.

Norwegian Breakaway in port at Nassau

Major objective was to get to Fort Fincastle, built in 1793, which is atop the highest point on the island. It gives great views of the port area. Now the weather wasn’t great. What’s unusual. It was quite humid and cloudy and we got the occasional shower of rain. But patches of blue sky and sunshine materialised for us when we got to the Fort, followed by a heavy shower of rain of course.

View from Fort Fincastle, built in 1793 by the British as part of the island’s defences.

We were due to meet the Imlays at 1pm at Oh  Andros for lunch. And I don’t like to be late. So we headed off at a brisk pace along the waterfront to the Fish Fry area. There are loads of what in Australia we would call fish and chip shops here. The shops back onto the water and the fish come direct from the boat to the kitchen. Oh  Andros gets a great write-up on Trip Advisor. It was not really up to my expectations.

Oh Andros where we tried some conch fritters and local seafood. Not bad but very slow. even slower with the bill!

We all had a fish platter of fried bits and pieces……shrimp, lobster and grouper. But there was not much of it………plenty of rice though. We preceded this with some fried conch fritters, supposed to be a specialty and island icon. It didn’t really grab us! Another experience though.

After lunch we headed off to meet up with the Segway trip people. Now this was new for Allthego and Homealone, the Imlays though had done it once before in San Francisco. This was a bit of a hoot, after getting the hang of it. Steering is a bit like snow skiing, bend zee knees and keep the weight forward. We had a couple of hours at this zipping along the waterfront taking in a few sites.  Only had one casualty. A rock jumped up and took the unsuspecting Segwayer by surprise. No damage to the Segway. What happens in Nassau stays in Nassau.

Imlays and Browns giving the Segways a short rest

Allthego allthego on the Segway

As we headed back for the ship it started to rain again and put a bit of a dampener on the end of our stay in Nassau. It had been a pretty full day of activities ashore and a cool drink was called for.

This is the channel through which the ships come into port, quite narrow. Oldest lighthouse in the Bahamas.

The ship left that night for the run back to NY.