ALL ALONE IN PARADISE

             Bimini!  1600 happy people and a couple of soreheads (and I’m not even sure about the soreheads).  This little island has attracted big game fishers and the rich and famous and infamous.  Hemingway fished for Blue Marlin here, drank a lot of booze and wrote a bit, “Islands in the Stream” is about Bimini.  Richard Nixon had a house here, near his friend, Bebe Rebozo.  Appropriately, the nice anchorage south of Bimini is called Nixon’s Harbor.  Then, there was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.  Who can forget Gary Hart's run for the Presidency?

            The best conch salad in all the Bahamas can be found here, a mere 50 miles from Florida.

  Friendly Joe puts on quite a show, but he also makes a mean conch salad.  He has passed the tricks of the trade onto his daughter whose salad is not the same as Joe’s, but she’s a lot prettier!

            Ashley Saunders whose family has lived on Bimini since the American Revolution has built a unique house.   

In 1993, he began construction of a house unlike any other on the island.  Using found and recycled materials he has built one of the most creative structures in the world.  It’s a massive structure designed to withstand the ugly forces of a hurricane but endowed with the touches of a true artist. 

 The interior and exterior walls are mosaics composed of colorful tiles, shells, bottles coins and other found objects.  His home is inviting, comfortable and certainly unlike any other on the island or in the world.

            Besides conch salads there are rum punches, rum runners and the like.

  Sherry’s on the Beach has been a mainstay for years.  Even before there was a building for her, she served up drinks from coolers under a tiki hut on the beach. 

  If you’re lucky, you can see the green flash when the sun sets over the ocean to the west.

            Leaving Bimini is hard.  The people are wonderful and necessities (food, rum, beer) are available.  The water in the marina is so clear you can almost read a newspaper on the bottom and it is filled with all the creatures of the sea. 

 

Fish and

 rays

                                                          And even sharks.  Eeek!

                                      The beach is inviting, even when there is a storm brewing.

  

Besides shells and sea glass you can find interesting sculptures or maybe an altar to Poseiden

  But, “all good things must come to an end” or maybe not.  We struck out bright and early around the north side of the island.  We immediately encountered NE winds that called for a really close hauled sail.  As the morning progressed the wind shifted more and more to our nose and the waves were not kindly either.  It soon became apparent that we were in for 10 more hours of a motor slog.  So, we turned around and headed for Bimini.

  Then, it occurred to us that we had plenty of ice (necessary for the rum drinks!) and food, especially since I had caught a beautiful king mackerel (we threw the barracuda back!).  We didn’t need to go back to Bimini. 

            Let’s go to Gun Cay!  Honeymoon Harbor, uninhabited island all to ourselves.  Sounded good.  When we got there, there were 2 trimarans and 5 power boats anchored there, one of which was polluting the tranquil anchorage with its music.  Happily, they all moved on by nightfall and we had the place to ourselves.

When we anchored, the air was filled with the perfume of tiny flowers that covered part of the island.

  This is what we came for! Life is good, no?

AU REVOIR FLORIDA, BONJOUR BIMINI!

We hung around Ft Pierce much longer than we had planned.  Matthew came to Florida so we waited to visit with him.  Then Kathleen’s sisters, Theresa and Beanie came down to Clearwater for some fun in the sun.  We drove over to visit them.  We enjoyed the West Coast and Beanie showed that still has what it takes to do cartwheels

.Kathleen showed us how to make dribbled sand castles.  I think that Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia must have been inspired by the technique.

 Sometimes, you can get some pretty bizarre results—do you see Richard Nixon in this one?  

 

We left Ft Pierce bound for Lake Worth.  The day started sunny and warm but by 10 it was cloudy.  Then the rain set it and we had it off and on for about 3 hours.  Sometimes it was heavy and the cloud cover thick enough to prevent satellite reception for the GPS.  We were nearly blind.  Between the two of us, we were able to make out the channel markers through the rain.  We got soaked!  We made it to an anchorage in Lake Worth (5 miles short of the preferred destination) and got Bruno to shore for his business.

The next day, we motored on the outside to Ft Lauderdale.  We met Jim and Ellie (s/v Finnirish) and Peter’s sailing buddy Al and his wife Phyllis for dinner at the Quarterdeck.  Ft La-di-dah was packed with tourists and sun worshippers as usual.

The Greek Festival was in full swing. 

 I’m sure St Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church made a bundle because it was unbelievable crowded.  The food was so-so, not even any authentic gyros!  The pastries were good, especially the baklava.  How can you go wrong with walnuts and honey?  Like any place where there are crowds, people-watching was great.  The dancing was fun to watch, especially the men.  They stomp back and forth from one foot to the other with their heads low and swinging.; makes me think they look like bulls.  Then they’ll slap the ground with one hand then the other as they drop onto the knee that corresponds to the hand.  Then they stand up, slp with their right hands on the outside of their right feet and then jump way up into the air.  All the while their female partners are bowing in front of them slowly clapping.  Oh, yeah, they’re dancing around their drinks! 

While waiting for a suitable weather window to cross to Bimini, we had sun-downers with Mike (Sailing cat Sponge Bob on our dock) and a really sweet young couple next to us on the dock, Peter and Rachel (s/v aurora).

They are doing it right.  They have a bare bones boat, as much as they could afford, I guess and they are doing it the way our boat suggests, Now or Never!  I hope they have a good crossing.

We left Ft Lauderdale at 5 AM and dropped the hook in Nixon’s Harbor at 7 PM—53 miles in 14 hours.  We had the main up for most of the trip.  It didn’t help much with speed, but it did steady the boat.  Nixon’s Harbor? You ask.  Yep that guy.  Seems back in the day Richard Nixon had a house near his friend’s (Bebe Rebozo) on the bay on South Bimini.  At any rate, it’s a reasonable good anchorage and easy to get into even at night (the light on Round Rock is no longer functioning so you either need GPS or good visibility).  During the night, it got pretty rocky and rolly but we slept through it.

So here we are at Bimini Blue Water Marina.  It’s quiet here, no trains, no trffic noises, no emergency sirens, no bridge construction.  But it did rain, a tropical downpour about midnight!  A minor thing.  We closed the hatches and were rocked back to sleep.  It was quite windy the next day and we watched an impressive storm built over the ocean with huge breaking waves and thunder and lightning.