Christmas in the Bahamas

Christmas has always been a special time for me. A time to reflect on the past year, to remember friends and family. Sometimes this kind of transient lifestyle we live can leave you feeling lonely around the holidays as your friends and family are not with you, but this year we were very lucky to be joined by the Lawrence's from Port Sydney, Ontario.



Jim and Steph are old friends from when we worked in Kuwait and we were so very excited and happy to be able to have them with us for this holiday season, with their two lovely children, Andrew and Kate. So, what did we get up to while they were with us. Well, we started off in Nassau at the Nassau Harbour Club Marina. When the weather was right we made our way to Allen's Cay.

Allen's Cay is a lovely group of very small islands, a National Park and home to the Bahamian Rock Iguana. We anchored on the west side outside of the more popular anchorage purely because we draw too much and would have gone aground. Our favourite beach is marked on the chart below. It is very well protected and the iguanas are hanging out on the beach, they are very used to being fed by visitors. Because it is quite a shallow lagoon the charter trips that frequent the Cays do not seem to come into this area leaving you to have this beach to yourself as well as the beautiful coral that can be found all along the sides of the lagoon. Rays even come into the lagoon to feed on the conch.












We celebrated Christmas among the iguanas, thankfully Father Christmas found us, and the turkey actually fit in the oven.  John made a wonderful Christmas feast while we went and burnt some Christmas over excitement off on the beach.







The following day, Boxing Day we headed off to Norman's Cay  to try to dive/snorkel the airplane wreck, a cocaine smuggler that didn't make it to its refueling point. Unfortunately for us the weather did not cooperate and there was too much of a sea state to allow for us to snorkel the wreck, so instead we played on a sheltered beach, until we started to feel cold and then headed back to the boat so that John and Jim could go and see if they could find us some lobster. And find lobster they did.




There was nothing keeping us at Norman's Cay due to our 8ft draft, we were very restricted as to where we could go, so we headed  back to Allen's Cay to spend a couple more nights before we headed back to Nassau.





All in all, it was a wonderful time. We had a lovely Christmas with very dear friends and we got to stop and appreciate the rough beauty of the Bahamas. It is an incredible cruising ground, northern in appearance, but the water is crystal clear and warm, and there are few island inhabitants which makes for a wonderful natural spectacle. I understand completely why people come back year after year. Next time we visit though, I believe it will be with either a much bigger and better inflatable dingy so that we can anchor very far out and use the dinghy to get into the smaller and shallower areas easily and quickly or, in a catamaran or swing keeled boat so we can tuck up into all of the amazing lagoons.



So, back in Nassau and our friends back to Canada it was time for us to get our skates on and get ready to head north. Why, you may ask, were we so eager to start heading north in January, well you'll just have to wait for the next post to find out,