Nassau Harbour
Montagu Bay
West Bay
Lyford Cay
Coral Harbour
Climb to Fort Fincastle and the Queen’s Staircase
Explore Fort Charlotte’s tunnels and moat
Visit Ardastra Gardens, Zoo and Conservation Centre
Dive the West Bay wrecks
Tour the Pirates of Nassau Museum
Fort Charlotte
Government House
Cabbage Beach, Paradise Island
Prince George Wharf
Nassau Botanic Gardens
December through April brings the driest weather and the busiest cruise-ship traffic through Nassau Harbour, while the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June through November. Junkanoo, the country’s biggest street festival, fills Bay Street before dawn on Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, so guests wanting to see it should plan an anchorage well ahead, as moorings around the harbour fill quickly that week. May and early June typically offer calmer seas with noticeably fewer cruise ships in port.
Lynden Pindling International Airport (NAS), about sixteen kilometres west of downtown, is the busiest airport in the Bahamas, with direct flights from dozens of cities across the United States, Canada and Europe. It’s also the main hub for onward inter-island flights to the Out Islands, making Nassau a natural first or last stop on a wider Bahamas charter even for guests whose cruising itself happens elsewhere. A short taxi or ferry ride connects the airport area to the downtown harbour and Paradise Island.
Nassau Harbour itself is a working port shared with cruise ships and ferries, so many charter guests prefer Montagu Bay, just east of downtown near Fort Montagu, or the calmer waters off Lyford Cay at the island’s western tip. Paradise Island’s own marinas offer easy walking access to the resorts and casino for an evening ashore. Whichever spot is chosen, a call ahead is worth making in peak cruise season, when harbour traffic can make manoeuvring close to the main channel slow going.
One to two nights are usually enough to see Nassau’s colonial centre, climb to Fort Fincastle and spend an afternoon at Cable Beach or across the bridge on Paradise Island. Most charter guests treat Nassau as a gateway rather than a destination in itself, provisioning here before heading out to the quieter, more scenic cruising grounds of the Exumas, a short sail south, or the Abacos to the north.
For about fifteen years from 1703, Nassau had no effective government, and pirates including Blackbeard, Charles Vane and Calico Jack Rackham used its shallow, well-defended harbour as a base for what became known as the Republic of Pirates. That era ended in 1718, when Britain appointed Woodes Rogers, a former privateer himself, as royal governor, arriving with pardons for pirates willing to surrender and ships to hunt down those who refused. The Pirates of Nassau Museum tells the story in more detail today.
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