Well today is the day. We woke up and had breakfast early including trying to get Abby to take another Dramamine. She used to be a sucker for peanut butter with the pill encased in the middle of a glob of peanut butter, but not anymore. Won't even lick it off of your fingers. I guess in her mind that stuff makes her sick! So we tried wrapping it in cheese which is another of her favorite things. Even with the pill mushed into the cheese she spit it out. I don't know what Debbie did but Abby took the pill finally. It was just past high tide and we wanted as much tide as possible to go out through the channel and back into the ocean, so we left around 7:00 AM. We had no problems in the cut this morning and saw good water even where we had hit last week. Makes me think more there must have been something that drifted into the channel and we found it.
Once underway and clear of the channel it is a straight shot to Bimini, around 60 miles and the waves and wind were pretty much on the bow. The standard advice is to never cross the Gulf Stream with any northern component to the wind. Winds today were 10-15 knots out of the east southeast and the waves started at about 3-4 feet but dropped as we got closer to Bimini to 2-3 feet. We picked up a push from the Gulf Stream and that increased our average cruising speed by about 2 knots. Free ride (well almost).
We have been using the water maker some lately and it has worked well. The one thing that seems to be a problem is that if you don't use it for a couple of days the little sea critters die in the sea water and cause a stink and taste to the water. I guess the trick is to use it every other day or so. The solution is to change the prefilters and wash out the filter canisters to get rid of that smell/taste. Once done the water tastes great, and one of the startup procedures after the machine is up and running is to reject the product water for 3-5 minutes and then sample the water before sending it to the tank. Yup that means tasting it. It tasted fine and we topped off the tanks as we crossed the Gulf Stream. At certain points the water here is over 2500 feet deep and very clear.
Debbie went into sleeping mode and Abby was only sick once..... Yes the pill came back up too. I'm thinking maybe we need to crush it or find a liquid to give her. Maybe a wrist band around her paw??
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| No land in sight and very deep water. But as the saying goes if the water is over your head you can drown in it just the same as if its a thousand feet deep. Hopefully not our day for that. |
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| You can see the seas have dropped somewhat and we are getting close to Bimini. The crew is very excited about our arrival. |
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| The view from the cockpit looking north up Bimini harbor |
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| And look how clear the water is. Even in 30 feet of water you can clearly see the bottom and Manta Rays . Just looking in the water you can tell if there are fish or not. No guessing required. |
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| We are at Brown's Marina in Bimini |
We docked at Brown's Marina for the night. We arrived around 1:00 PM and had lunch after we tied up. The entrance channel into Bimini Harbor was very poorly marked and confusing to say the least. There was a green buoy laying on its side near the beach, (remember red right return) so that one was not to be counted and the others didn't make a lot of sense either. We made it in, but probably not on the best of routes as we saw less than 1 foot under the props but did not touch bottom. Once inside the water is much deeper and we easily tied up at Brown's. One of the things they forgot to tell us was that they didn't have any electricity so I guess we will need to run the generator before we go to bed tonight. No discount either off of the docking but we were all tied up and didn't feel like moving somewhere else.
Now it was time to go to Immigration and Customs. We had our yellow quarantine flag up and we were actually visited by a customs agent who was walking by, but he wouldn't clear us. I offloaded my bicycle and headed off to the Immigration building down the street, reminding myself to keep left. This is the Bahamas and they drive on the left side of the road. Immigration was painless except for the $300.00 combination cruising permit and fishing licence. We had about 6 forms all pre-filled in and I had everything they needed with me. Next down and across the street is Customs which was even easier and faster with no fees. Next up a welcome to the Bahamas, Bahama Mama and relax for the rest of the afternoon. We had a lobsterman come by to sell us lobster tails 12 for $50.00. They looked good but I had heard from friends that they had bought 10 tails for $20.00, so I thought I would wait for another day.
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