Why on EARTH is this so hard to find? Seriously, I cannot for love not money find out how warm the water is. This ought to be the easiest thing in the world to find on the internet, shouldn’t it?
If it isn’t over 86 or so, I am not buying a bathing suit. 
Oh, good - I won’t be tempted to get in. I didn’t really want to go bathing suit shopping anyway.
I just got back. It’s cold to get in, but you aren’t going to be going swimming off the beaches anyway. The surf is quite rough because of prevailing winds patterns. I bruised/broke a rib trying to swim off Cabbage Beach.
If you’re thinking about snorkelling or diving, either of the two big operators on New Providence (Stuart Cove’s and Bahamas Divers) will loan wetsuits, and Bahamas Divers actually required guests to wear one.
Not me - I always start to drown when I try to snorkel. One day I’d like to try SCUBA diving, but it isn’t to be on this trip - I’m going to be responsible for some kids I can’t just abandon to go take a dive class.
“The Bahamas” is much larger than New Providence Island. Many other islands have exquisite beaches, some exposed, some very protected.
Near shore temperatures tend to be higher on protected beaches because of solar warming and limited mixing with cooler offshore water.
And of course, this is only the beginning of April. Water temperatures will continue to rise for at least the next six months.
If you plan “swimming” on a protected beach pretty much anywhere in the Bahamas, you are highly unlikely to require a wet suit or any other kind of temperature protection.
Oh, and for many of those “out island” beaches, you’ll easily be able to walk off to where a bathing suit is not needed either. Have fun!
(miss the islands-- need to go back soon)
I’m from South Carolina. We don’t get in until the high 80’s unless pursued by killer bees. When I was up in Maine the other people on my boat were just gleefully jumping into that 55 degree water and couldn’t understand why on earth I wasn’t interested. (They also thought it was a REALLY HOT day. 82, I think.)
Wow, you really ARE a hard case! Here’s a chart of historical near-shore temperatures for a spot in Miami that is probably a good predictor for the Bahamas http://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/FifthStreet_Miami/seatemp
But even here, you would be comfortable (or think you would be comfortable) only from about June through September. This will be crushing news to the local Chamber of Commerce, I am sure.
I grew up in Miami-- am I to understand that South Carolina has it over south Florida in high temperatures, and South Carolinians have expectation of a much higher ambient comfort level than us Floridians?
Really, I’ve been in the water in the Bahamas in every month, and I think I’ve only been uncomfortable due to cold in January, maybe February.
I do though remember wading a trout stream in Maine once, wincing at water temperatures in the 40s. At one point the stream flowed into a lake, presumably at about the same temperature. There was a beach, and lots of people swimming. They were blue, but I don’t think they were Smurfs. Now THAT is some cold tolerance!
I don’t know from Floridians, I just know nobody I know is going in until it’s warmer than your house is.
Well then, I sure hope members of your party really enjoy guzzling over-priced fruity rum drinks, or casino gambling. Besides water sports, in my experience these are the only offerings differentiating the Bahama Islands from the Low Country Islands of South Carolina.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with these-- I’ve invested rather heavily in both myself, on occasions too numerous to mention.)
(Actually all of the above, if we include Tennessee whiskey and back porch poker as alternatives for rum and casinos.)
Meanwhile, right this minute surf temp appears to be 77.4 F at Surfer Beach on Eleuthera, and 62 F at Hilton Head. And Eleuthera grows great pineapples.
I don’t even want to go, really - I mean, I’d like to go and spend time there, but we’re going on a cruise and it’s a Family Cruise To Enjoy Your Evil Half-Brother and His Obnoxious Family. My boyfriend isn’t invited because we aren’t married, and I have to room with the world’s most horrible thirteen year old girl. It looks really awful, honestly - most of the shore excursions are day passes to resorts. I’m sure I’ll be able to go on my own and see the towns (we’re going to Freeport and Nassau and then turning around and going home) but on the whole a cruise seems like an awful way to see the place.
I know, people are going to think “poor you and your all expenses paid vacation!” but I don’t see them offering to room with Little Miss Needs a Beating.
Sorry-- I completely understand now.
Sadly, Freeport and Nassau are perhaps the least Bahamas-like of all the places in the Bahamas. Still, the water *(“the colors, man, the colors!!”) *is amazing even from the deck of a cruise ship. The rum drinks will help you forget even the aggravations of family (I know-- been there, done that).
If you get the chance, always walk around the corner from the “straight line” between any two places. Then stop in the local shops, local eateries, and local watering holes. You’ll find them much better than the ones to which tourons are sent by cruise directors.
So you don’t own a bathing suit? Or you just find it too cumbersome to take along?
Or you’re not really sure you want to go to the Bahamas?
What are you, a fashion n00b? No self-respecting female is going to wear last year’s bathing suit. Sheesh.
I have bathing suits that are size 2. I have the bathing suit I bought at great need when I was a size 12. (I may go burn it.) I have no size 8, now that I’ve been running for six months and lost weight. Surely this is not an uncommon problem?
This one? My condolences.
Personally I’m not a fan of the cruise - I tend to get cabin fever. In your shoes I might try insisting on the participation of the boyfriend and if refused use that as an excuse to back out.
Yeah, that one. In fairness, I have not been applying myself as I should. I’ve done a few things with her, but haven’t really committed to doing it right - somebody in that thread suggested “employing” her, which is a fantastic idea but requries so much work from me, and when I get home from work I am just not in the mood. Which is selfish and I need to do something. But still.
I wouldn’t be going at all, except that it’s really important to my dad, and I can’t really deny him it. He suffers every damned thing my evil half brother does to him so keenly, and it’s so important to him that I go, that I just can’t say no. My mother went completely out of character and into the “things your family does that shocks you” territory, though, when I tentatively asked if Himself might be invited and she quoted the whole single cabin rate at me, I later found out, to convince us to get married. Which is low and unlike her.
I’ve enjoyed European cruises in the past as “sampler tours” - you get to see the city and decide if you want to go back and really spend a lot of time there or not. This kind of thing I don’t really see the point, though - to see a “beachy” sort of place it seems like a dumbass compromise. I hardly ever to go “resort” type beach vacations, although I was shocked at how much I enjoyed Hawaii. Still, I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed it there nearly as much if we hadn’t had a car, you know?
There’s, let’s say, twenty shore excursions. Let’s say that sixteen are either “day pass to a resort”, which is what I almost called retarded and then figured that people with mental delays would still figure out that you wouldn’t go to a resort from a cruise ship. Two are cruises, which is even more stupid and you would seriously have to have the smarts of particularly dull pond scum to take that one. Of the two that are left, one is the bus tour of the town, which we’ll end up going on because my dad has a very bad back, and that way you do get to see something besides “beach”. The other one is “three man endurance rating kayak hand to hand beat a shark into submission adventure tour”. Well, I mean, my mom and I psych/dared each other into the bicycle shore excursion in Barcelona. You know what I remember about Barcelona? Trying not to get left behind by the bicycle tour. (And getting back to the ship and bragging to everybody that WE took the BICYCLE tour and it was REALLY HARD and we are SO TOUGH, yeah baby.) I just think the cruise format is a bad fit for, ironically, the kind of places most people cruise to. I’d have so much more fun staying in a hotel in the Bahamas and driving on the wrong side of the road and getting lost on the way to the restaurant the hotel recommended.
ETA but I ran out of time - I went shopping for a swimsuit today anyway. I know it’s such a cliche, but do you know how psychically damaging that is? I have lost a LOT of weight since I’ve been running. I was NEVER fat, and everybody tells me how good I look now that I’ve gotten to a sort of medium weight. Well, let me tell you, there is still a whole lot of woman to fit into those suits. I don’t know what people who are actually overweight do - I suppose they buy a fat lady suit from Lands End and then don’t take their t-shirts off in the water, because I am not a “large” if the range is small, medium, large, and extra large. And yet I had to start at larges both top and bottom and still risk putting somebody’s eye out if I ever decide to get off my towel and participate in the physical activities for which bathing suits are designed. And the fit is still pretty precarious. Do the “cite?” guys on the SDMB design these things?