03/17/2010

After a few hours sleep we were up at 1.30am and hauling anchor by 2.00am. We crept away from our anchorage neighbors, crawled out of the Florida Straights Chanel into the mighty Stream! It was a dark night, cloudy and no moon. There was a loom in the sky from Miami but nothing to see ahead of us to the East. We hit the stream much earlier than we were expecting based on the forecast position of the West wall. We encountered large Northerly swells from the big storm that hit the mid-Atlantic states earlier this week. We were expecting the swells but not the Northerly winds gusting to 17 knots!!!! So all in all the first half of the trip was not too much fun. I soon became seasick - the worst I have ever had it (not actually puking but mighty close). Thankfully Tom has an iron constitution and has never had any form of motion sickness in his life. Just as well as I was pretty useless. We made satisfactory progress and as the sky began to lighten, the winds died right down and the seas were much less choppy, although we saw swells the whole way across. After a heart stopping few minutes when we altered course to investigate what looked like a body wearing an inflated life jacket - but was actually a cluster of red mylar, heart shaped ballons, we spied land. We had a bit of a white knuckle approach to Bimini as the skies were cloudy which means it is hard to "read" the depth of the waters. The entrance channel is not marked and all we had to go on was a GPS co-ordinate from a web update! But we went slow and I was perched in front of the mast with the hand held radio on "intercom" so I could talk to Tom and help guide us through the shoals. We never cease to be amazed at the character of the waters here - words just cannot describe it. You can see the shells on the bottom in 12 feet of water and what a blue! We finally got into Alice Town, North Bimini at about 11.30, were met at the dock by a very friendly Dock Man, were tied up and cleared through customs in no time - a very easy check in. Unfortunately, it poured with rain all afternoon but that did not stop us walking through town and exploring a bit. After buying a couple of bottles of Rum it was back to Osprey for well earned cocktails and a lovely dinner. It is now 8.00pm and I am going to bed.

Comments [3]

03/16/2010

The seas are calm. The wind is soft. We are anchored outside of No Name Harbor off Key Biscayne. Bimini is 48 miles away. We are poised........

Comments [2]

03/15/2010, Coconut Grove

We are enjoying some wonderful weather here in the Grove. It is warm and sunny but cooler at night which makes for good sleeping. We have found everything we need right here and because the Marina runs a launch service we havn't even had to relaunch the dinghy - which was stowed on the coach roof for the crossing that never happened. The days are passing very quickly and we are watching the weather closely, even getting up at 6.30am each morning to listen to the Carribean Weather forecast on the SSB.

Things are looking good this week but will not say more so as not to jinx things.

Comments [1]

03/13/2010, Coconut Grove

The new GPS units arrived as arranged on Friday. By noon time we had the new Chartplotter installed and up and running at the Nav. station. The new handheld was tested and found to be fully operational. The original chartplotter is also working so we certainly have enough GPS options at this point. So, once again, we are ready to go. But, of course we now have to wait for weather. We had hoped that we could go on Monday but right now that does not look good. At this point we are not sure when we can head over. We are fairly happy here at DKMF - although we would prefer to be in the Bahamas! Certainly it is cheap enough so that is good. The only problem is that the Fresh Market is too close and we can never get out of there spending less than $50!!! The days pass by very quickly - there always seems to be something to do.

Comments [1]