Crossing the Exuma Bank to Nassau and Atlantis

New Providence, Bahamas

As we reached the north end of the Exuma Cays, it was time to head across the Exuma Bank to New Providence (Nassua). Middle Bank is an area in the Bank that is passable and with limited coral heads, so we headed north of the Yellow Bank and directly from Allan Cay to Porgee Rocks. On this path, the Banks are about 35 miles wide and we never saw water deeper than 25 feet during the crossing, most was in the 15-foot range. To get through the 10-mile section of coral heads, Larry stood on the boat with the autopilot remote control and steered the boat around each of the coral heads. We originally had thought that a remote control for the autopilot was just another gadget that didn’t have much use, but it came in very handy sailing at 6 knots while dodging shallow coral heads in the Exuma Bank.

After crossing the Bank, we went around Paradise Island and entered Nassua Harbor, from the West entrance because Berkeley East is too tall to go under the bridge that crosses the harbor. Our original plan was to anchor out, but the anchorage was crowded and very sallow. We took a couple cuts at it and after touching the bottom we decided the marina at the Atlantis resort was a much better, all be it much more expensive, alternative.

The Atlantis resort is modeled on the legendary island city of Atlantis, written about by Plato. It is a Las Vegas meets Disneyland mega-resort. The resort is huge, and there is a small marina with aqua blue water full of mega yachts.

While we were there, we decided to upgrade Berkeley East and found the right replacement ?

The first night in the resort we had an outstanding dinner at Nabu. After dinner we found ourselves just watching all of the people. Going from spending months on small islands to the action at the Atlantis was a real culture shock!

We spent the few days walking around the grounds, lagoons and swimming pools, enjoying the resort.

We spent hours walking through Atlantis’ large aquariums with rays, sharks, fish of all sizes, jelly fish, eels, lobsters and much more.

After seeing the aquariums, we headed over to the waterslides. The slides range from large steep drops to inter-tubes floating through the resort. We went to the top and jumped into the first slide without a line, assuming it was the easy slide. Wrong! We ended up blasting down a dark small tunnel being jostled from side to side. Next was the one from the top on a tube for two. It started out with a steep drop and then through a few tunnels and dumped us out in the river that flows through the resort. Our backs will never be the same.

After five more runs down “the race” slide we had had enough and headed back to the boat to recover.

We took it much easier the next day and left the marina around mid-day for an anchorage on the west end of the island.