Christmas in Bimini!

Happy New Year to all of our blog followers!!  Yes, we made it to Bimini on 12/24 with Erik and his friend Austin to enjoy the beautiful blue sky, aqua blue waters and warm sun of the Bahamas.  But it was a very rough ride for me!  So we had several easy days cruising our way to Ft. Lauderdale and then spent some time buying even more food and supplies for a fun Christmas week.  The wind refused to die down and in fact increased slightly as we tried to find a weather window so the boys would have a full week in the Bahamas.  So after looking at the buoy and wind reports we decided it would be doable, just not great to leave early Saturday morning.  The guys arrived on Friday and were psyched they could travel over with us.  So before the sun was up we departed with good thoughts.  But I made two huge mistakes.  I assumed I could tolerate 3-5 foot waves with the guys taking care of everything on the boat because we had easterly winds and would take the waves on our bow.  NOT!!  The Gulf Stream makes a mess of the waves so they came in all directions and were unpredictable and of course higher at times than predicted.
Second mistake was to have everything ready to throw Mexican casserole together in the crock pot so we would have dinner cooking during the crossing.  Only I took too long to get it together and half way through we hit the inlet out to the Atlantic and "all hell broke loose" with crazy waves.  So I had to suddenly abandon the galley to keep from getting sick and left an open salsa jar, dishes of chicken and onions all carefully cut the night before and perched myself at the salon door, thinking I could get back to the galley as soon as we passed through the inlet.  But no, I never left my perch the entire trip (7+ hours) and sadly listened to stuff crash all over the galley!  What a mess when we landed at Brown's Marina in North Bimini!  Oh well, here are the pictures to document our adventure this week.

Heading out the New River in Ft. Lauderdale to reach the inlet to the Atlantic.

Our path up to the beach side of Bimini, lots of small pastel colored building which are homes and businesses.  

 

Sunset Christmas Eve, always peaceful!

The Speyer family at the beach on Christmas for our first Bahamian swim. Not a wave in the ocean! 

Erik and Austin happy to be on vacation!

Joe's Conch Shack where the guys enjoyed  freshly made conch salad, not for me!

Sapona dive and snorkel sight that the guys enjoyed as a stop over on our way to anchor out for a few days.  Erik's head is the tiny dot in the middle of the picture.  

Austin looks happy to have a fun place to explore! 

And look who has the helm!  Calm waters that day as we went south to Gun and Cat Cay.

This is a working light house on the south side of the uninhabited Gun Cay. 

While on anchor, Austin got busy with fishing and caught a few unidentifiable fish to grill up for lunch.  The fresh fish was rather tastey but that skinny one got thrown over board with a foul taste! 

We found decent sized conch as we walked around shallow water at the Gun Cay beach so the boys experimented with opening the shell to extract the fresh meat.

The trick is to whack off the top point of the shell and scrape the conch out in one neat twist of the knife. 

Looking down the shell, the conch awaits its demise. 

Conch out and ready to be diced up for some chewy but tastey snacking. Only the white part is eaten. 

The beach we took the dingy to had lovely warm shallow water at its edge and was full of sting rays that float by.  They were curious and came up to us to check out our feet.  Later we saw kids feeding squid to them so likely these sting rays were used to being fed so actually were coming to us to beg for food.  

On the way back from the beach to the peacefully anchored InSpeyered 2.  Later that day, Thursday, we learned that the winds were changing and strong northerly winds were on their way.  So we up anchored and headed back into the marina earlier than we had planned.  Right now we are snugly tied  up for the New Year's weekend.  Tonight we will go to a special festival for New Year's Eve.  Fun times to end the vacation for our special boys!  Happy New Year!