April 15 - Night (14th) is uneventful except for the young partyers who get back to the boat on the other side of the dock from us at 3:35 a.m. with a girl screaming at the top of her lungs (I first thought someone had woken up to find that some had died)and then playing rap at top volume for about a half hour. I’d identify the song but its lyrics are so crude that I know I would offend some readers - for those in the know, think of a female very explicitly telling you want she wants you to do to her with your tongue. Anyway, they knock it off without having to be told after not to long and it’s quiet again. We get a later than hoped for start due to difficulty in “uncoupling” from poor dock at Miami Marina, topping off water, etc. Leave Government Cut at approx. 7:45 a.m. with a brisk SE breeze (15/20knts). Lovely warm sunny day. Put up sails and find that there is too much Easting in the wind to allow us to sail the course we need to sail to cross the Gulf Stream at the proper angle and make it to N. Cat Cay. In addition, we’re bucking head seas of approx. 3 plus feet. Leave the engine on and motor sail at between 4 and 5 knots trying to point at high as possible and still maintain some headway. I pretty early realize that although traveling conditions are generally favorable, the wind direction is not and we we’re in danger, not only of missing N. Cat Cay, but even of failing to be able to get to Bimini in daylight because traveling the correct course would require us to travel at so slow a speed. I make the best of trying to point as high (into the wind) as possible without totally losing headway and thinking about our options, which are none too attractive at this point unless we plan to make an overnight, which now is among the options I’m considering. Anyway, I resist the urge to take down the sails and power into the wind and waves to make “Southing” and we keep trying to point up as high as we can while we make Easting. Gulf Stream is quiet, so that’s not an issue. Sometime around 2:00 p.m. the wind starts to move further to the South and all of a sudden we pick up speed and we can make better Easting. In an hour or less it becomes pretty clear that we can make Bimini in daylight and that if we want to we can probably even make North Cat Cay in daylight if we get across the Stream and turn South. I decide that the former option is better than the latter and we plan for Bimini. Never thought I’d go back to Bimini. We were there in Endless Summer (our 34 ft. SeaRay) a number of years ago and there’s nothing much there, but there is a customs facility so we can check in there and not have to do it later at North Cat Cay or Chub Cay. I also wanted to avoid Bimini because the old entrance channel was very dicey for a conservative guy like me, and even the new one didn’t seem very inviting on the charts. Anyway, we make the new Bimini entrance channel around 4:30 (pretty low tide - again, not what I would like) and with heart in mouth we make it in unscathed and tie up at Brown’s Marina, the first one inside the entrance channel. Facility is simple but nice and dock hands are knowledgeable, although they put me in a slip where the piling at the end of the finger pier has a broken 4/6 member that sticks out beyond the piling protector and again, my heart is in my mouth as we come in because we have to insure that we stay off the piling until we’re all the way in and the stern, where there is far less beam than the center of the boat, is safely away from that piling.
Finding Customs and Immigration to check in is the next challenge. The old Customs and Immigrations buildings are chained up and getting someone to tell us where to check in is not so easy. Turns out that Customs is in a building associated with a new marina that has taken over the name of the old Big Game Fishing Club (the Hemingway hangout that burned down a while ago), and you would never find it if it wasn’t pointed out to you. Absolutely no sign on the street at all. After Customs we go to Immigration. No easier to find. If you weren’t told where to go you’d never find it. It’s in a small adjunct building way off the “main” (read almost only) street near the Police Station. Anyway, we finally all check-ed in, it’s getting later and we have a few drinks and dinner at the small bar/restaurant associated with the marina. It’s surprising good. Kryss has absolutely terrific delicate fresh “fish fingers” and I have the most tender and lightly batter cracked conch I’ve ever had, and we retire right after dinner. All in all a surprisingly happy ending to a day which at its outset portended something less.
Pictures are facing East from Brown’s Marina across the Great Bahama Bank.
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