Sunday, February 15, 2009
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Wow, we're in the middle of nowhere... I just typed in our location of Bimini lat/long and called it up on Google Earth and we're a little speck in an ocean of blue... Incredible. It's in the 80s here and the sun feels hot, hot, and hot. This is quite a nice facility but a bit expensive. It's supposed to be $2.50/foot and they're charging us $2/foot so I shouldn't complain. While I love the ability to connect on and off to the Internet, we haven't been able to connect to shore power to charge up, they must have an adapter or something for the power cords, and water here is $.50 a gallon. It seems strange, coming from the Great Lakes, to have to pay for water usage. I understand it completely, but am just not accustomed to it.

Denny and Brigit from Aurora (pretty little blue boat) dinghied over to say hello while we were having our second cup of coffee in the cockpit. They were the blue boat that followed us into Bimini yesterday (they noticed we were from Michigan) and then beat us as we ran aground LOL. They 're berthed over at Blue Water Marina (where we were originally trying to get in last night only nobody answered our hail). What a small world - they were originally from Michigan - kept their boat over on Portage Lake area near Wayne's sister and I think she taught in Manistee. They now live in Florida. It was nice of them to come by and say hi!

Right after that "the Princess" turned up his music kind of loud. Wayne commented that the local fisherman that was fishing nearby must have loved that - it probably scared the fish away. I heard him yell a little while later to the fisherman - "Hey, the fishing any good?" I wondered if he was serious or being snide and felt really bad for the fisherman and hoped he didn't think all Americans were like this guy. I was glad to see he turned it down a bit about a half hour later.

Later in the morning, Wayne got the dinghy down and the motor on it and dinghied over to customs and immigration in Alicetown. He also checked out Blue Water Marina too to see if we needed reservations to get in there or what (no). He said there were plenty of spaces and after talking to the girl there said all we needed to do was show up. We vacillated back and forth as to whether to stay here or go over to Blue Water and we'd decided to stay here tonight. After talking to the guys here, they were going to fix us up with power so then I'd have power and the Internet.

We started going over the charts and weather - a front is moving in tomorrow night so we may be here for a couple of days - and were waiting for our power cord adapter when all of a sudden the Princess started cranking up the music quite loudly this time. I mean this time it hurt the ears and they were right under the speakers so I don't know how they stood it. But the speakers faced us and were blasting us so I couldn't think straight. Wayne tried waving desperately to get their attention to see if they'd turn it down but they were ignoring us then started dancing. Finally the woman spotted Wayne and started waving at him. He was trying to signal, "could you turn it down a little", as was I, and they laughed and cranked it up all the way (silly me I thought it already was!). She yelled at her husband or whoever he was to her while they continued dancing "Hey - the sailboat doesn't like us". Wow... They continued turning it up, down a little then louder still. Nice. Classy. Thoughtful folks. We tried hailing the office and could barely hear them or ourselves as we tried to hail them to tell them what was going on. Finally we called them back on the VHF and told them we'd changed our mind - it was tooo noisy here and we'd like to leave before it got dark. They said they'd be right down to help us but after 20 minutes and it getting darker, we said forget it and just left. As we passed the "MegaJerks" I heard them turn down the music and someone said - Oh look, they left... Like we should stay and subject ourselves to their abuse? What on earth makes people like this!?! You'd think they thought they were the only people in the world or something and that they were so cute that everyone would admire all their actions... While I normally like country music - I don't like it hurting my eardrums and reverberating throughout my body. I could never see purposefully trying to hurt someone else or aggravating them - like these guys were. I can see where poorer nations think of all Americans as A@@holes if these people are representative of what they normally see. It makes me feel sad to think that these people that live here might think that we're all like these morons. Do we all show this arrogance that I've encountered here in the last 24 hours? I'm embarrassed and feel like I should apologize to "D" and the poor fisherman trying to make a living for his family for the "ugly Americans" that they need to deal with in order to survive... Unlike us - where we just pick up our anchor and go elsewhere, the locals live here. They shouldn't have to put up with such rude behaviors though...

Once we got to Blue Water and called in, the girl said someone would be right out there to help us as we pulled in. There was nobody there, but at least she had answered our call this time as we approached. We circled out front twice, and then pulled in to the front T Dock. Don't know where the guy was that was going to help us, but it didn't really matter. The boat in front of us caught a line for us and told us the electric at that spot didn't work, and they'd move up a little so we could moved up one more behind them and access the power stand. Their boat hailed from Chicago, IL but they were from New York down here chartering (2 couples with kids) and fishing. Nice people.

We went to the office to check in but they had left for the night. Wow - when it's closing time it's closing time LOL... Walking back to the boat I saw a large skate in the water and followed it as it swam along under the dock. The girl from the boat behind us said it was there yesterday too. Maybe I can get a picture of it tomorrow... Time for dinner before it's to dark out to cook - Flank Steak, mushrooms/onions, hard crust bread and Black Raspberry Merlot... Dinner tasted incredibly good tonight. The Merlot was the perfect choice for the meal.

I heard a Frenchman singing tonight after Wayne fell asleep. He sounded like he was enjoying himself. It was much nicer sounding than the soon to be blown out speakers of that drunkard aboard Princess Marie Ann. Mellow and pleasant. He has a nice voice and it just sounded like he was serenading life. Somebody else had a harmonica and joined in, it reminded me of Joey. I haven't heard a harmonica in a longggg time. I'm charging up my computer batteries and the handheld VHF and listening to the Frenchman. My Sprint broadband keeps giving me an error so no Internet access for me here without wireless. I tried the same trick as last time when the techie got it to work in N. Carolina but to no avail... I keep getting the Error 651 message. I have a good signal on it but can't get it to work