Bimini Basin
13 January 2013
Bob
(Continuation of my article)
Once out of the Okeechobee waterway there is a uniquely protected anchorage called Bimini Basin. It's a tidy and well-protected little lagoon in downtown Cape Coral, surrounded on all sides by waterfront homes, a condominium and a town park. It's about a mile off the waterway, a great hideaway from winds of nearly any persuasion and easily accessed through one of the countless canals that define Cape Coral. There's room for 25 or more boats in 8 feet of water though we never saw more than a dozen there.
Planning to stay for a couple of days, Bimini Basin's convenient little discoveries ashore kept us anchored there for a week. The town park offers a basic dinghy landing and from there you can walk or bicycle to almost anything you might need; a propane refill was a mere block away, ice cream was even closer and a Publix was less than a mile away. But the most fun was discovering the unexpected- a little French cafe, Bistro in Vivo run by a hardworking mother and daughter from France. The food was scrumptious and the fun was passing along our menu request - an exercise in cross-cultural misunderstanding that nonetheless resulted in absolutely delightful meals.
We could go on to mention the Italian market filled with both the expected and the exotic and the Hispanic market where we filled Puffin's little freezer with delicious rib-eye steaks at little more than half the price at Publix. Naturally there is a West Marine nearby, right next to a hardware store. It began to seem that if you couldn't find it in Cape Coral you probably didn't need it.
Bimini Basin's most arcane offering arrived in the form of a minor mystery. Once in bed we heard a soft but persistent sound like a dock line squeaking against a bulwark and most evident in the forward berth. A walk around the deck revealed nothing obviously responsible for the noise. The next evening continued with the same rubbing noise. More thought was expended. Puffin was at anchor in a well-protected anchorage with little wind and everything on deck seemed snug. Nonetheless we stuffed a rag around the snubbing line where it passed through the hawse. Nothing changed. The noise persisted each evening (not heard during the day) and each evening it resulted in a fruitless foray on deck.
With the mystery still teasing us, Puffin departed Bimini Basin and these mystery sounds (more on this in a moment) for Pelican Bay where Puffin next anchored. Randy has provided a fulsome description of this anchorage and we can only add that a walk on one of the less traveled trails out to the beach might treat the stealthy hiker to a view of several feral pigs, responsible for the uprooted soil evident at places along the trail sides. These dark-colored critters are a little smaller that the farm varieties or the ones we watched at the beach at Big Major in the Exumas. They're also very skittish and we couldn't get a good picture. But if you hear a rustling sound in the underbrush, that's what might be lurking there.
Several days later, Mark and Mary Woodard, aboard The Good Life, met up with us at Marina Jack, Sarasota. Recounting their stay in Bimini Basin, they mentioned a mysterious noise while at anchor there. "Yes!, yes!" we exclaimed, "we heard the same noise!" (Sweet vindication now at hand for Puffin's crew.) We all speculated, without success on the possible sources: mating fish, a dock creaking somewhere? Alas, no solution to date. (Continued next post)