Bahama Breeze

A week in hot and toasty Bahamas over. As per, a swim trip means you only really get to see the bits of a country you pass in a mini-bus between the hotel and pool morning and night, which in this case in Nassau was about 5 miles.

This is my third time in The Bahamas, and we stayed at the Baha Mar, the colossal three hotel, casino, 9 swimming pool, 40 restaurant Chinese owned hotel on the clear turquoise waters of Nassau, the capital and most populated of the 3,000 islands that make up the country.

We were in The Bahamas to see our daughter swim for the Bermuda National Team, who were joined by delegation’s from Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and two U.S. swim clubs plus the hosts, who have the best swimmers in the region and were made up of 10 clubs competing for their National Championship.

There were almost 250 swimmers on deck aged as young as 6 and as old as 25 as swimmers sought times – swimming is all about times – to qualify for the Commonwealth and Olympic Games.

Quite high up on my bucket list is to do an England test match in the West Indies, but if I don’t I would have at least been witness to the noise and colour of a Caribbean crowd in full party mood around a swimming pool in a somewhat rickety stand holding around 1,500 people in the shadow of the Thomas Robinson National Stadium.

Full bands, full dress and a full bar all added to the occasion as the kids swam morning and night in oppressive heat in and out of the pool. Saturday night’s evening session ran almost 6 hours, and whilst trying to keep cool by drinking Kalik’s, I did what a swim parent should never do, and that is to work out how long your own kid is actually swimming — less than 4 minutes!

The Bermuda team swam well winning 50 medals including 10 in the men’s and women’s relay where Bermuda dominated. Our daughter was part of the 13-14 team that won three golds 🥇and one silver 🥈in the relay’s that were swam to noisy crowds at the end of each night.

Our daughter also won two individual gold medals 🥇winning the 50m and 200m backstroke. She also won silver 🥈in the 100m backstroke, 400m freestyle and 200m fly. She came 4th in her other two events. Very proud of her.