Sunday at Nippers

Nippers is Legendary

Every Sunday, on Great Guana Cay, a party of epic proportions takes place at a place called Nippers. Although not all that "Bahamian", in the sense that most folks attending are boaties from the surrounding islands, it is a "must experience" Bahamas agenda item.

We arrived in 30 knot winds and dropped anchor. Our big 70lb Bruce did not do the job against those wins and waves and we began to drag. Thankfully the windlass worked well and I was able to pull up the anchor without breaking another finger.

After almost crashing into a boat on a mooring (as in, I had to read out push us away. One more inch and it would have been major smashage), Julie almost fell overboard trying to grab a mooring ball with the boat hook. In fact, it pulled the boat hook all the way in and she had to let it go as the boat bounced over the top of the can. Thankfully, an angel appeared in the form of a Moorings captain in a bad-ass, brand new looking dingy. He handed her the rope tied to the ball and we were cleated in minutes. I later bought him his drink of choice when we met up at Nippers later in the day.

The one rule of thumb, apparently, to be followed on a visit here is not to drink more than two "Nippers" or "Guana Grabbers" as they are beguilingly potent. In fact, after we walked through the jungle and up the hill into the Nippers establishment, there were four football-player-sized fellows trying to ply a passed out friend from a chair into whiich he had fallen into a shaded pit sort of area. He had not minded the drink limit restrictions and was more passed out than any drunk I've ever seen. Eventually they got him in a chair and, on my suggestion, made him drink a glass of salty pool water so he would throw up. It worked like like a charm, but was not pretty.

The layout of nippers is fantastic. It is is three stories high, with two salt-water pools; one cascading into the other and sits on the windward side of Great Guana Cay Island on a white sand beach. The frozen drinks truly are ass-kickers and mot folks have theirs either in one of the pools or out in the crystal-clear blue waters of the Atlantic. Lots of "hot bodies" abound (mine not included) and there was surely some topless showmanship going on.

We decided to spend the night on the mooring ball and head in the next morning, so I ordered my third "Nipper" drink. I don't know what's in them but i tell you, four would not have been a possibility.

The girls had a great time playing in the sand, we had a nice dinner at Grabbers (on the Leeward side) and motore out in the dingy for a rough night on the ball with seas averaging 3, surging to 4 or 5 feet at times and winds of at least 35 knots all night.

Next morning leaving, we heard a high-pitched squeal which I somehow knew was a loose alternator belt. I tightened her up as best as I could but we couldn't realistically run the boat over 1500RPMs, which would have made for a s-l-o-w return home. Thankfully the wind was still howling at 35 knots at just the right angle, so we dropped the ball, motored out a bit to get past the anchorage and sailed all the way back, averaging 6.5knots with just the jib up.

One bit of ~"fun" that happened along the way was we hit a squall where the winds gusted to 50kts and we had horizontal rain. Julie went below and I was left to fend for myself at the helm. Not being ablew to see AT ALL, I had the wise idea of putting on Mackenzie's dive mask to deal with the rain -- worked like a charm.

At some point, i plan to post some photos and vieos we took that day at Nippers.