Today was a busy day, we spent our morning touring Potters Cay, the local market and wharf.  The picture below shows the towers of  the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island (renamed from the less touristy label “Hog Cay”) in the distance, small local boats in the foreground, and Potters Cay is in the middle distance under the bridges.

Potters Cay is probably one of the least touristy places on the Nassau waterfront.  It is dominated by local fish and produce markets and is the loading point for many of the inter-island cargo boats.

The causeway to the island is lined with shacks in varying degrees of decrepitude. Each of them faces the street with a bar or food stand.  A few make the pretenses needed to attract tourists, but most cater primarily to locals.

Most of the space on the Cay itself is devoted to the fishing fleet. Many land conch, but there are other products too.  Some shell collectors, and several of the boats were selling whole frozen snapper.

A look down at the shell collector’s boat cleaning his catch.

Seems like whatever you need from the ocean you can get by calling Rasta Willie!

Cleaning the day’s conch catch.

A load of starfish drying in the sun.

I’m not sure what this boat did, but it was sure full of lots of “stuff”.

The outlying islands in the Bahamas are served by the Mailboats.  While I am sure they do carry the mail, they carry just about everything that is needed, as well as passengers.  Loading is a study in controlled chaos…

I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that the citizens of this island nation have a passion for sailboat racing.  Racing not just any sailboats, but a distinct class of boats know as Bahamian Sloops.  They are about 28 feet long, wide, shallow draft, tall masted, long boomed boats descended from the traditional local fishing boat.  Some are lumpy and rough, others are sleek and smooth, but almost all sport great paint jobs and show pride of ownership.

A traditional Bahamian Sloop

Our afternoon was spent retrieving our mainsail from the sailmaker.  When we got there it was in the last stages of sail surgery, running the last seams through the sewing machine.  It’s now installed back on the mast where she belongs.

Harmonie’s mainsail being put back together.

We hauled our jerry jugs off to the local gas station to pick up some diesel fuel for the main engine and gasoline for the dinghy.  We are getting ready to head east to the Exumas hopefully tomorrow morning.