Wooo it’s been so long since my last entry! It was a bit of a slog through the end of the ICW. We were pretty tired of the urban setting; no swimming, no beaches, lots of traffic. It was certainly time to leave. BUT before we left Florida for the crossing we were able to rendez- vous with some fellow Canadian cruisers setting off for Bimini! What a swell crew! We had a lovely evening over on a gorgeous aluminum hulled boat hosted by Yvan and Hellen. The following evening we had a crew over on our boat- a planning meeting of sorts. We were all entertained by the ship’s cat Tilley. He was the star of the show, or at least he thought until he was banished to the V-Berth in a Captain issued “time-out”, after he did an amazing flip turn sprawl fling onto one of our guest’s faces. Luckily it was Barry- a kind older gentleman who was Tilley’s catcher. Yes Barry caught Tilley with his face. We had just met Barry and his wife Wilma, so we all held our breath as Tilley knocked Barry’s glasses off. To our delight Barry burst out with a jolly laugh! His eyes lit up! To our relief, his was really delighted by Tilley’s antics! Everyone was. The Captain was the bad guy sending Tilley away.
We left early the next morning to head to Bimini. We travelled with Syrena and Arapesh. Bimini was a welcome change for us all! 85 degree and crystal like waters! Gorgeous! We spent the evening in Bimini, then we headed out early the following morning with our dear friends on Arapesh. We cruised to the banks where we anchored for the night. It was the most extraordinary experience; Being anchored in the middle of the sea, 360 degrees of ocean, in 10 feet of water. The night was quite, so quite! And dark, minus a few other mast head lights scattered in the distance.
The next morning we departed and headed for West Bay to ride out some heavy winds. We are here now just enjoying a bit of down time, waiting. Gary and I don’t do very well with down time, so we decided to give Tilley his swim test- something to break up the monotony. If you ever need anything to break up a monotonous moment I highly HIGHLY recommend throwing your cat into the bay! Brilliant! Gary and the boys were still snorkelling around. So I picked up Tilley and brought him to the stern. Tilley could sense danger as he began to tense and squirm. Gary was in the water, so I thought I could “pass” Tilley to him and make it a nice “gentle” process. Gary, seeing the squirming cat suggested I just toss him in. Understandably, Gary wasn’t about to receive a thrashing fur ball of claws and gnashing teeth. So I tossed him in. Unbeknownst to me, Sam was hanging off the cat’s rope ladder! The rope ladder Arleigh made for Tilley to scramble up if he were to ever fall in the water. I should mention this wasn’t intended to be an exercise in animal abuse, we really wanted Tilley to know what to do if he ever fell overboard- he needed to use his rope ladder. Tilley splooshed into the water, he came to the surface in a blink of an eye and started freestyling it towards the BOW of the boat! Gary had to re- direct the crazed swimmer to the ladder where Sam was hanging oblivious to any of the commotion around him. Tilley violently swam for Sam hanging off the ladder. Tilley clawed his way through Sam and scrambled up the ladder. Sam crawled up following Tilley, which in retrospect was a good move as he was bleeding from his wounds and it could have attracted sharks. The next step was to give Tilley a fresh water shower to get rid of the salt. Tilley must have wondered what the hell he did in his past life to deserve all of this! So I…I held him…yes…as Gary showered him in fresh water. Much more blood was shed. Actually surprisingly Gary and Arleigh came out of the ordeal completely unscathed, whereas Sammy and I have gashes head to toe it looks like we were…I was going to insert a comparative simile here, but…it looks as though we tried to bathe a cat! Arleigh had no idea what was going on at the surface, he was under water exploring the whole time, which was a blessing as I’m sure he would have had “advice” on how to “properly” orchestrate this exercise.
Tilley is back on track today, with no hard feelings. We will spend the day here checking out the beach and swimming. It looks like we have a weather window tomorrow and will head to Shroud Cay and hopefully rendez- vous with our friends Brian and Michelle on Jennie B.
ciao
ps I failed to mention; Tilley is a fantastic swimmer, seriously! The cat’s got talent!