Crossing to the Bahamas – is history!

Leaving No Name Key
heading across to Bimini!

Beautiful water with no land in sight!

We've arrived - "downtown" Bimini

Morning Ferry Ride

Alice Town, Bimini

Looking good - visitng Guy Harvey's Marina in Bimini

Colorful buildings - grocery, etc

No words can describe.......

Cool restaurant on the water

Cruise Ship out by Big Stirrup Key

Feeling kind of alone out here!

Hanging out in a local tavern in the Berry Islands

NautiNell at the Great Harbor Marina
Berry Islands

Finally, we left out of No Name Harbor and headed on to Bimini, The Bahamas! We started out about 8:00 a.m. and made it to the marina about 1:30 p.m. It was a great trip across although it was pretty skinny getting into the marina. As we were coming in we saw several huge stingrays! We had no problems with Customs and we can now stay here legally for 90 days! We stayed at Bimini Blue Water Resort for $1.00 a foot. Very reasonable – however they do charge $15.00 a day for electricity and .60 a gallon for water. They are supposed to have the best water around though – R/O - reversed osmosis. That's pretty important around here.

We walked about "town". I used that word loosely – not much of a town. Quite interesting though. The town is AliceTown. It's the capital of Bimini. Great little bar called – End of the World Sandbar. We had a drink there and added our names to the wall in felt tip. "Capt. Chappy and NautiNell were here"! The restaurant at the marina is closed on Tuesdays so we walked down to the end of the island for dinner at Coconut Plum. Only people there - but it was a great little spot!

We had a great night sleep. I think we'd been pretty anxious about the crossing. We were by ourselves and really stepping out of our comfort zone. More to come though – next we have to cross over to the Berry Islands.

We walked up to the bakery for fresh baked bread and coconut tarts. Walked around checking out more sights. The water is so beautiful here but the town is so poor. There is a resort on up the island that is now owned by Guy Harvey. This is a little more upper end. The word is also that there are plans to build another 1700 room resort along with a casino. We didn't see any signs of the construction yet. But we did see an ice cream truck! It looked just like the ones from home and even played the same music. The kids came out from everywhere!

We went on a dinghy ride along the beach on the outside. I know I keep repeating myself – but the water here is beautiful! It looks like a swimming pool, it is so clear. It's not really very deep either close to shore. Mike caught some fish – along with a huge "pencil fish" – about three feet long. It flipped and flopped – splashing all about. Cool! We also saw more stingrays. Some of them were really big!

Later we walked to the restaurant at the marina – Betty served us a great dinner for our last night at Bimini.

If weather forecast is good we will be leaving in the morning going to the Berry Islands. This will be a very long ride. Approximately 80 miles. We are working our way to The Abacos. Gotta see the sights along the way!!!

Thursday morning we were up and ready early. We bought more fuel - $5.85 a gallon – are we back in Canada?? HA! It was a very long day. We had 4 foot waves but at least they were following. It wasn't really too rough but Mike had to work at keeping NautiNell on course. We had to out maneuver a storm. The water was so deep that it went from the beautiful aqua color to a deep dark blue almost black. It was still pretty but a little unsettling. We did see a shark though – he passed about 50 feet from our boat! I expected to hear the music from Jaws but no such luck. LOL!

We planned to anchor out near Big Stirrup Cay. Both the Stirrup Cays (Big and Little) are playgrounds for the Cruise Lines. Here the cruise boats anchor and take their guests to the islands where there are several shops, restaurants and beach activities. These are all set up for their guests – private. When we went around the island we saw a Norwegian Cruise Ship anchored there. The weather was starting to blow so we moved right along around and dropped anchor just south of the lighthouse. This area is all known for poor holding (according to the guide books). However, we really didn't have much of a choice with the weather coming in. We didn't have any problems other than a storm came about 2:30 a.m. It pretty much missed us but did cause us to get up and pace! The real problem was there was just a very small bowl of water than had enough water in it and we didn't want to be blown aground. Lucky for us we didn't have a problem.

It's Friday, the 13^th! Great! Wonder how this day will go!!

Like I said earlier, the anchorage turned out to be pretty good. It looked pretty stormy in the direction we had planned to head. We couldn't get anything on the VHF and of course, no cell service, internet or television. We are definitely flying by the seat of our pants! We decided instead of another crossing of about 26 miles to Sandy Point (Abacos) we would go south a bit to the only marina in the Northern Berrys. The Great Harbor Cay Marina is located in a Class A harbor which means it is very well protected from the winds and storms. Sounded great to me! I'm not testing this Friday, the 13^th – just gonna go with the flow! We plan to spend a few days here at the marina and wait out the winds.

On Saturday we rode our bikes to town. Again, I'm using the word town loosely. It's not a very big place. They have no bank, post office, etc. The mail boat comes over weekly with supplies but hasn't been here for three weeks because of the winds. Some of the shelves in the stores are becoming pretty bare. We ate lunch at a local place called White Water. There was a pool table and a big checkers game going on. This place was rather colorful! There was an area that was enclosed and locked with a "teller" type window. People kept coming in and going in the room and coming out with some type of cash register receipt. We finally found out that this was one of the places that ran numbers! It's kind of like our lotteries but privately ran. There are three "numbers" houses on the island. Hope someone won big because there seemed to be a lot of money floating around there!

There are four manatees that live in the harbor. One of them looks like it may be a baby. They are so cool. There is a guy here that looks the surfer dude part but is doing an internship on the manatee. Not sure what that means – we just see him hanging with the locals. He did ask us some survey type questions though so he must be doing his job. HA! We also met Pedro – the chef from a restaurant next door called Tamboo. He's about 30 years old and is from Nassau. Has a great Bahamian accent!

We spent the evening mulling over our charts – trying to figure how to get where we're going! There just isn't a good way with the winds blowing hard from the east. Looks like we're stuck for a while. We will eventually cross to Sandy Point (about 40 miles northeast) then around the tip of the Abacos (Hole in the Wall) - nice name, huh! Then on up the coast to Cherokee Sound and on to Little Harbor. We're really not far from Marsh Harbor as the crow flies – but this crow has to go by boat!

Sunday morning Mike caught a huge Mutton Snapper! A 3-4 pounder! He caught it right outside the harbor. After that he learned how to open a conch and how to make conch salad. The local fishermen here make a great salad- ceviche. They gave him some for us to have. Oh, and later he went fishing again and caught another huge snapper right in front of the marina office. Mikey had a big day today!

Pedro, the chef, came over for a visit. He invited us to the restaurant where he would cook us a special Bahamian meal. How cool is that! We've never had a chef make us something special – off the menu. It turned out to be great! Minced lobster (chunks of lobster in a type of creole sauce with green peppers and onions), grilled grouper, Bahamian rice and a great spinach salad with pine nuts on top. We really enjoyed it until we got the check for $104.00! Oh well! Maybe that's why we don't have chefs make us specials!

After all, I had spent $20.00 doing laundry earlier. Just two loads! That's right, $5.00 to wash and $5.00 to dry. Oh and you have to fill the washer with water yourself with a hose. There are two sets of w/d but only one works, of course. You just can't sweat the small stuff around here – it's part of the adventure.

I do have to tell you this though – Mike was doing something on the sundeck of the boat and dropped a drill bit into the water. He actually got his magnet out and eventually came up with it! He also got an old broken boat hook out of the dumpster and fixed it to be a long handle for his gaff. He won't change – one night $100 for dinner - the next day – dumpster diving! Yea!

Monday we've spent just hanging out – looks like we may leave tomorrow or Wednesday. Weather forecasts show that the wind should be getting better. It will still be out of the east (not so good) but we should be able to handle it. We'll see!

Stay tuned!

Till next time!

Admiral "C"