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Day 6 -9, July 11th to 14th
Tuesday, July 11th was spent recovering from Monday – we
both said we couldn’t imagine people boating when they are “older”.
We were both stiff and sore with the odd bruise here and there to
attest to the fact that we are indeed, getting older. We quickly
found out that there was NO wireless high speed internet access but
instead, we could log onto their computer in the lobby for a mere
$3.00 for 10 minutes. What they failed to acknowledge was that it
took 10 minutes just to get to your email site then another 10
minutes to open each individual email – forget about replying! I was
there 30 minutes and barely got through 4 emails. This is not going
to work for us – so I’ll have to call on our trusty girl Friday
(that would be Jeanne) State-side to read and sift through spam on
all five email accounts we have for various business and personal
use. Barry played around with the dingy and new GPS for the dingy
and that took several hours, especially when he took it for a little
spin and ran out of gas! Seems he floated to shore down the way,
took a short cab ride back to the boat to get his wallet, took the
cab to get gas and went back to the dingy – fixing that problem. I
didn’t even know he was gone! We had supper on board thinking that
what I could cook up would be much better than the local fare but
after a while I may change my mind on that one.
Wednesday, July 12th was looking like it was going to be
very much the same as yesterday. It is still quite windy here and we
pretty much decided we would just hang out here in Bimini, seeing as
how the wind looked like it would persist for the next week. A very
large boat (yacht) docked almost beside us, blocking our view a bit
but also blocking the wind which turned out to be a very good thing.
The swim platform is located right outside our bedroom window and in
the middle of the night when it is windy, the waves slap up against
the swim platform and make a nasty noise which is not conducive to a
good night’s sleep – for me that is, Barry sleeps through anything.
We were going to walk to the beach with Salty but decided a dingy
ride would be more fun. As soon as we were ready to go, it started
to rain…just a short sprinkling though as it rains on and off every
couple of hours it seems. We went off in our new dingy to find a
nice deserted span of sandy white beach which isn’t that difficult
because there’s a lot of that here. We picked a spot and were almost
to shore when Barry had to jump out in order to pull the motor up –
of course this would be the first time having to do that and it took
a while before he found the pin to release it. By that time, we were
on shore but also had the surf bouncing against and into the dingy,
thus filling it with water. Never mind, an automatic baler will help
us out as long as we can get the dingy far enough out of the surf!
We floated around in the water while Salty ran up and down the beach
and pounded into the waves – he loves the beach! Did I say deserted
beach? No sooner had we positioned ourselves on our own little
beach, when along came a very large sailboat filled with what
appeared to be tourists ready to jump in and snorkel over to join
us! Whatever – can they not find somewhere else to go? As it turned
out we had to get out of there anyway as low tide was quickly
approaching and we would have had broken our backs trying to drag
that very heavy dingy across the sand to water. We went back to the
boat and needed a cocktail, so we relaxed and watched marina life go
by for the next couple of hours. Barry got the new BBQ out (I was
making steaks for supper tonight) but found out that there was a
part missing and I’d be using the good ole George Foreman grill.
Needless to say, our new BBQ was out of commission before it even
got lit.
Thursday, July 13th saw more people arriving for the
weekend – mostly smaller fishing boats zipping across from Miami. We
spent Thursday doing more of nothing, checking emails first thing in
the morning, walking on the beach and just relaxing. We managed to
take the wrong street down to the beach and encountered the same
pack of 3-4 dogs we did last year. I’m sure they are very timid but
put in a pack, you never know. Barry scared them off with a stick we
were carrying and yelling at them but good ole Salty was feeling his
oats and wanted to snarl back at the male – good Lord, Salty,
everyone knows you are a weenie so what is that all about! We did
manage to find a safer street to the beach that I will call “Church”
Street because there is a Church at the end of it overlooking the
Ocean. We took the dingy over to a new condo development on South
Bimini Island (10 minutes away) called “Bimini Sands”. It really was
quite stark with hardly anyone there and the only restaurant was
pretty much the same. The food was “ok” but the service? Well, the
service was on Island time as well, to say the least. Apparently,
there is another restaurant the residents can go to at the other end
of South Bimini that has been here for a long time that we will have
to check out another day. We had visitors around our dock that
evening when we turned on our new underwater lights. Apparently, the
lights are a new color of blue that really attracts the fish at
night – one guy actually wanted to come and fish off our swim
platform for bait – didn’t want to visit with us, just get those
fish!
Friday, July 14th would bring in the boaters and fishermen and
the dock started to fill up in our section – the section for the
larger boats. It’s quite entertaining watching people dock their
boats and makes you realize you aren’t the only ones who have some
difficulty in that regard. In fact you realize you are damn good
when watching some of the antics other people pull. There was one
boat, La Chantal, about a 40’ being Captained (if you can call it
that) thrashing around the docks threatening to smash anything in
its sight. Between a Captain from another boat, dock hands and
dumb-assed luck, they finally were able to tie this thing in before
it did itself or anyone else any harm. Yes, La Chantel was something
else to watch! Barry took the dingy on their own little adventure up
through some little canals on South Bimini (we are on North Bimini)
and had quite an entertaining time himself. The pictures attest to
some interesting real estate to say the least.
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