Bimini

Sunrise snooze

Up at 2:30 AM and we are on our way at 3:00AM. No other boats have left yet. So unusual for us to be the first to leave. Shortly after we get underway I get hailed on the radio by a third boat that is heading out at the same time. “Truant”, asks to accompany us. Good to have another boat with us. Relatively calm for the first hour or so until we get a couple miles off the coast. The wind picks up and we all put out our head sails. Even though we are close together I start to notice their running lights and mast running lights are occasionally disappearing. Then I realize we are getting some pretty significant swells from the north, but they are far enough apart in the dark that they are barely noticeable. The wind picks up out of the southeast and we have waves rolling in from the opposite direction of the swells, we are bouncing around pretty good. Pitch, roll and yawl is getting to be a little too much for Linda's ginger root and she has to resort to the prescription stuff.

"Departure" in the distance

The first time in years. Once day light comes, the swells look pretty impressive and we have a wet ride from the waves from the south. We all make pretty good progress, but the wind starts to turn more on our nose and we drop the sails for the last hour or so, to the entrance to Bimini. We arrive at Brown's Marina around 12:30 PM. I am very happy Tom and Marketa talked us into leaving early. Boats that arrived later in the afternoon, who left around 6:00 AM had a much harder time getting across with the wind shifting to the east. Chris Parker's weather window crossing forecast evaporated on us.

We three pull in to Brown's marina on North Bimini one at a time. The current is running pretty fast here and it can be rather difficult coming and going at anything other than slack tide. Lucky for us we had lots of hands helping as we come plowing into the dock somewhat out of control, could have been very ugly. Truant comes in last, a little more graceful than us.

Up goes the yellow Quarantine Flag while I go to Customs and Immigration to clear into the Bahamas and pay our cruising fees. Crew (Linda) can't leave the boat until we are cleared in. Once that is done the yellow flag comes down and the Bahamian courtesy flag goes up.

I thought I had run our Macerator pump while crossing, but with all the noise from the boat motion I did not realize that the Macerator pump was not working. What is a Macerator pump ? It purees our poop from the holding tank and sends it over board once we are in open waters. On Lake Champlain it has to be completely disconnected and rendered unusable for obvious reasons. We have pump out facilities available on the whole east coast so I did not reconnect the plumbing and electrical switch until yesterday. It has not been run since our last trip off the lake two years ago. Anyways, we are at the dock with a full tank and a non-functioning method to empty it. This isn't going to be fun. We have dock side bathrooms so to quote Scarlett Ohara ! “I'll think about that tomorrow. ... After all... tomorrow is another day.” in other words, Mañana !