Bimini - Marina fulling up

The Bahamas Teleco is closed on Saturday and Sunday and there is a Bahamian holiday on Monday, so it will be Tuesday before I can get a new SIM card for our cell phone. The attendant at Browns calls one of the small local stores, “Joy and Sue” which has SIM cards. We walk over and get the SIM cards and buy some data and voice time.

Still warm and in the low 80's which is near record highs for Bimini this time of year. We walk to the north end of the island to the Casino Resort. Not a lot of people there this time of year. This is their slow season. Business doesn't pick up until late winter with spring break. As we start the long walk back, a local Casino employee stops and asks us if we would like a ride, which we quickly accept.

The winds pick up out of the west and the entrance to the Harbor is looking rather rough. Later in the afternoon some more cruising boats start trickling in. They had a much worst day crossing than we did and most of them look rather exhausted. Late in the afternoon a bunch of us start gathering on the dock watching one sailboat trying to enter the channel to our south which runs south to north perpendicular to the waves rolling in from the west. They are getting pitched around and it is clear they do not know where they are suppose to be in the narrow channel and go aground surrounded by breaking waves. They are getting bounced around pretty hard. A fellow here traveling in a 55 foot trawler heads out in his runabout, to their rescue and pulls them off the bottom and tows them in. An impressive rescue. They bent the rudder shaft and can not steer. A brand new 45 foot sailboat on their first trip from Fort Lauderdale with a captain they hired and they run hard aground the first day. A seventy foot sailboat with a wiser captain came in later after waiting for the tide to come up before coming in. Apparently the first boat ignored their advise over the radio to wait for the tide. With our 4.8 foot draft it was not an issue for us.

The marina which was mostly empty a couple days ago is now nearly full. That evening we have a cruisers get together at 5:00PM. Quite a large group. Later Linda and I walk down to the Big Game Club and share a Crack Conch dinner.