We awoke at 3 am, eager to depart Biscayne Bay for Bimini. We awoke to fog. Dense fog. 10 foot visibility fog. We went back to bed.
We awoke at 5 am, hoping to depart Biscayne Bay for Bimini. The fog had diminished, but still too dense. Should we risk it? We slowly made preparations. Then all of a sudden it was gone. We hurried and got underway in new-moon darkness. It’s an earie feeling relying solely on your charts and radar, hoping that anyone crazy enough to be out here would have lights on.
About a mile into it a boat was approaching us fast from our Aft Port quarter. He didn’t seem to be paying attention and was on a collision course. Brenda grabbed our flood light and shinned it right at him. Wow did he turn quick! It was a fishing boat heading out.
Though we had previously laid a track to take the shortcut past No Name Harbor, we knew quite a few boats were anchored there. We didn’t want to risk driving right into one in the darkness, so we took the long route through the stilt houses in Biscayne Bay. By the time we reached the houses, it was light enough to see and I sped up from our 4 knot crawl. The sunrise exiting the inlet was spectacular!
Once outside, the Bimini waypoint bearing was 88°. I set a heading of 115° in anticipation of the gulf stream pushing us north. This was probably overcompensating, but better to adjust toward downstream than beat into more upstream. By the half way point, I had adjusted to 105°.
The crossing was calm. None of the horror stories we had heard when you pick the wrong weather window. With the wind directly on our nose, it was a long day of motoring. Maybe someday we’ll get to use our sails.
$@&%*! We started to make water, but found a problem. A huge problem. The water maker was leaking badly. Five months of dealing with lightning strike repairs and now this on our first outing. Uggg. If we can’t make water, we can’t proceed. This will need to be our top priority after reaching Bimini.
We arrived in Bimini at 3 pm. The entrance is known to be challenging, with shallow shoals, misplaced markers and high tidal currents. All of the tips online directed us to aim directly for the Bimini Sands Marina entrance and then turn left 90 degrees close to the beach. Brenda had also taken AIS images of boats entering earlier in the day. Nail bighting, but fine, with a shallowest recorded depth of 6 ft. When we arrived at Bimini Big Game Club Marina, there was a 2 knot ebb current. I tried going past the T-head and drifting back into it, but there were eddy currents and we almost hit the end of the dock broadside. I went back around and re-approached bow into the current and dock, Brenda looped a cleat, and we pivoted in nicely. We’d landed in our first country as cruisers!
As captain I was the only one allowed to leave the boat. The on-site Customs office directed me a block down around the corner to Immigration. Fortunately he said the pink building because it didn’t say Immigration anywhere. Just Administration and Police. I went into the small hallway looking lost. No one. Finally I found someone who directed me to the last door on the left.
Checking in was esay, but two parts differed from all of the online information:
- The Immigration Card on all of the websites (Bahamas Government, Big Game Club, etc) was wrong. If you click on an Immigration Card link and it asks for a listing of the crew, it’s wrong. The correct one is a long skinny card like you typically encounter on an international flight that asks about you individually, which makes more sense that they want one from each person on board.
- The Health Visa is insufficient. They also want a copy of your actual Covid-19 test result.
