Timing is essential when arriving in Bimini. You want to arrive at high tide as the entrance is somewhat shallow. High tide was around 9 am the day we arrived. This means you need to leave in the dark. We left Miami around midnight and arrived around sunrise. If you look to the left in the photo below, you can see our first glimpse of the islands. After traveling out of sight of land for most of the night, this was a most welcome sight.
Flagler Memorial Island is an uninhabited artificial island in the city of Miami Beach in Biscayne Bay, Florida. A 110-foot statue stands as a monument to Miami pioneer Henry M. Flagler, who died in 1913. For more information, click here.
Provisioning a boat with pretty much everything you need for 3 months isn't easy and certainly can't be completed in just one trip to the grocery store. I use a chart created in Word to help me keep track of what I have and what I need to buy. I found it on the internet last year and made a few changes. Sorry I can't give credit where due because I couldn't find it again. I certainly don't get every item on this list. But it does give me a good starting point and makes me think about things I might have forgotten otherwise. We started working on provisioning every early this year. We bought and vacuum sealed most of our meat back in September when we were in Virginia. Then finished up in Florida buying most of the nonperishable items before Christmas and the perishable items after we returned. All that is left is to get a few fresh veggies and we will be ready to go!
Creak, thud, groan, swish, squeak....These are the sounds boaters listen to at night when the wind is howling. At first you worry about every little unnatural noise. But after all these years aboard, our ears are trained to drown out the unimportant noises. Okay, maybe we are getting old and our hearing is going. Either way, we have an awesome anchor and sleep well most nights even in the wind. For the last four days it has been blowing hard!. Most of that time it was 30+ knots. There was A LOT of creaking and groaning going on outside. This morning we woke up and walked around the boat checking things out as usual. This is what we saw. Then we walked to the bow and looked up....way up. Notice what is different??? If you said the antennae on the right is shorter, you win. They are supposed to be the same height. The top half fell/blew off!!! It is supposed to be attached with a locking washer and loctite. Not sure where the locking washer went. But it definitely wasn't there. You would think that shear gravity would have kept the washer on at least. This antennae is for our single side band radio. We had trouble with it last year in the Bahamas. We were outputting a strong signal, but receiving a weak, garbled one. Don checked the ground and all the other wiring. I read the manual and tried various settings. Nothing seemed to make it any better. Now we wonder if the problem was a loose antennae. Guess we will find out when we get the replacement installed. It has to be ordered and trucked in. Now to the hardware store to buy a super large bottle of loctite!
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