Friday, September 9, 2016
Friday, July 1, 2011
Sailing to Bimini
Sailing to Bimini. from Key Largo
5 AM, I called Chris (the weather Guru) and I looked at my blackberry for the weather map. I had a green light to depart, we pulled the anchor and left to Bimini, we had to use the reflector to see the marks but it was not hard to see them. 4 hours passed. We used the main reefed and the engine. we were going at 7.5 knots, not too bad, the current was in our favor. I can see at a distance a dark cloud with some spouts. I told my son that we need to reef our main to its maximum because we will get some crazy winds, and once we arrived to the clouds we got hit by very strong winds, maybe 30 knots. The ocean got mad as well and started to move a lot, not big waves but enough to make you feel uncomfortable.
We had the strong winds all the way to Bimini. We head the reel making a sound and there it was- a big Dolphin was hooked, a 4 pound fish, great ceviche for tonight I said!; We can see Bimini. at a distance. It was a beautiful site, deep blue water became light blue and looked like a pool. I wanted to jump right in!.
We headed for Alice Town, and found a spot to throw the anchor across from the Customs building, not a good spot since we were in the middle of the highway, but we didn't mind, we were so tired we left the boat there and went to town to walk on land!.
Visiting the Sapona
What an experience to snorkel in the sunken ship. We had a great time going around this ship, the light was perfect and all the fish around us looked very friendly, except when I got tired and decided to go back to the boat and 2 huge barracudas accompanied me all the way back.
We anchored at Dollar Harbor south of Cat Cay, it was suppose to be very calm waters and not too deep, but that night the winds were very strong. I had my handheld GPS with me and when I looked, I noticed we have moved. Yes indeed, we dragged 300 ft north to the shallow areas. I got scared, but when I looked at the depth finder we were ok, 5 ft deep. It looks like the anchor got a good grip. I threw a second anchor just in case. We did not move, but I didn't sleep well that night. Next day we went to see Honeymoon beach at Gun Cay.
We had a great day playing with the stingrays and doing some snorkeling, very pretty beach and all natural, except that there were a lot of boats.
I were told to visit Victoria Islands across South Cat Cay, because there were lots of beautiful coral reefs but I guess we leave that for our next trip!.
We headed back to Alice Town and waited for the next morning to leave for Key Largo.
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