Farewell Nassau Hello Rose

We left Nassau with the high tide and sailed past the race course for the Class C boats.  Their committee boats were much larger than I've ever seen. No problem getting race committee for these races!  We went the short distance to Rose Island first anchoring on the south side and explored the bay and the facing island. The interior of the island is a salt harvesting area.  I'm not sure if it's still active as we saw no activity while we were there.  We saw so many turtles on the north side, it was awesome. We walked all over the little island and found a long, concrete sidewalk with no buildings anywhere along it.  Must be a story there.  On the north side, we tucked in by a coral reef that was a fantastic chance to snorkel.  So many soft corals and a variety of tropical fish, really fabulous.  We walked the back side of Rose and found a lot of trails and walked over to the south side.  It was too close to dark to do too much exploring but still a great way to end the evening.  The less than wonderful way to end was discovering that we had left our propane tank back at the marina.  We had given up hope of it ever being filled but forgot to get it out of the group of tanks waiting for a fill.  The surge and our anxiety of actually recovering our tank made for a rolly, restless night.  Fortunately the tank was there the next morning, still empty, and we carried on.

The regatta committee boat

We picked up a hitchhiker along the way.  Nice of him to pose.

The end of the small bay between Rose and the facing island had been blocked
with these huge pieces of concrete.  I suppose it limited traffic from that end.

The facing island must have a lot of day visitors.  We saw lawn chairs and
other picnic items.

This hammock has seen better days.  Not sure I'd trust the lines holding it up.

This sidewalk ran all the way from the sandy beach to the tip of the island.
You can tell that a lot of effort was put into properly forming and pouring.

This sidewalk section branched off to go to the deep water side.

Rose Island had several houses including a bar/restaurant/resort.

This house was huge with wrap around porches with fantastic views.

This walkway went to an abandoned house.

This cut was made to get larger boats and machinery in to work the salt flats.

This looked odd from the water but we walked to it from the other side.
What you can't see from this angle is a small boat basin behind the seawall
and a road on the right side so trucks could load the salt onto cargo vessels.

Our south island beach view.  There are small islets dotted everywhere along with the reef.
The tides here are about three feet so some parts of the reef we snorkeled over were above
water as we left the next morning.

The ground is sharp limestone so no bare feet to get to the scenic overlooks.