Our time in Bimini was a great way to transfer us back to cruising.  The water was gorgeous and the boaters all had the same conversations over weather, anchorages and boat equipment. Saturday and Sunday the little marina filled up, all the people got their Bahamas SIM cards for phones and iPads on Monday, then we all left on Tuesday to cross the Great Bahama Bank. The bank is extremely shallow but the charts have commonly used paths or channels marked for safe passage. Half of the fleet took a more northern route and the rest of us went south of Bimini passing the Sapona Wreck.

The Sapona is a concrete steamer ship that lived many lives since its launch in 1920.   It was used for oil storage, liquor storage during Prohibition, destroyed during a hurricane in 1926, and used for bombing practice during WWII. We planned to snorkel here but the water was a bit choppy so we just took pictures and kept going.

The rest of the day was spent crossing the Great Bahama Bank, over 60nm.  The seas were calm, the wind was steady out of the south, and shallow water was crystal clear and a beautiful aqua blue color.

We knew this bank was going to be shallow (2.8 feet below our keel), but as you can see on our depth/speed instrument below, it was very shallow.  Never before had we skimmed the surface of such shallow water at these speeds.

Our sails made a shadow of Makai on the water.

If there’s one thing you CAN’T count on in the Atlantic ocean is a consistent direction for the wind.  Last spring we entered the Gulf Stream just above Bimini and enjoyed a wind out of the South driving us as far north as Rhode Island.  In July a weather system blew through providing us with wind out of the north to blow us back to Delaware.  This fall’s storms provided us with plenty of north wind to move us to Florida and after waiting just a few days we had a favorable south wind to cross back over the gulf stream to the Bahamas. It seems that every other week the wind comes from the opposite direction.

Now a big wind out of the North is predicted and we had to find a suitable anchorage.  Most of the boats we traveled with went to Marinas in Nassau, but we headed over to Rose Island and found an anchorage with good protection from the north wind.

Over the two days anchored here we only saw one person at the resort on the hill, a few boats anchored here on our last night, and a couple if lobster fishermen came by and sold us our dinner.

This sea monster wow’d us all into buying it.  Roy and I ate the legs like Alaskan King Crab legs, and over the next few days finished off the tail with cheese and crackers.

But, alas, the winter storms freezing the north eastern states and dumping truck loads of snow, managed to extend its fingers down to us in the Bahamas.  We still have our winter canvas up on Makai.  I never thought we would get this much use out of the canvas side curtains with windows, but we’re grateful for them now.  The outside temp gets down to around 70 degrees, which may seem mild to the people in New York, but we went to great lengths to be able to spend the winter wearing bathing suits. Luckily our enclosure blocks the wind and lets in the sun to warm up the cockpit.

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Quickly before we had to return to Makai, Roy took the camera and documented some of his underwater finds.  Lobster is his first quest. This guy is was too small, but it sparked his interest.

There were also a few little jelly fish looking things.

Here is an animal image in the water.  It reminds me a Topaz.

Don’t forget a selfie!

But now the rain has come and we have to go back to make sure Makai is safe.  It’s kind of funny that a bunch of swimmers would want to rush home to get out of the rain.

But I’m sure we left a few windows open and the wind and waves are bouncing Makai around.

A hot shower, nice dinner and beautiful moonrise is a great way to end the day.