March 9-11 Passage and North Bimini

We heard a good song on the satellite radio today with a very appropriate line: I'm not calling in sick, I'm calling in gone. We left Monday afternoon and this evening is our first opportunity to connect to the internet. It was $11 well spent...we are junkies jockeying for internet time.

Sunday afternoon, we had an interesting occurence in the harbor. The pumpout boat visits every boat to remove waste. Austin was driving this day. He is the asst manager at the harbor and we knew him from Craig's time on the wall when we first got to Marathon. He was visiting each boat at anchor, in the company of a federal marshal. Instead of doing pump outs, they were on a stealth search for a felon from Utah who had skipped his trial (the marshal is chatty but no further details offered), thought to be hiding out in Marathon. We suggested the pirate boat...turns out that boat, M/V Heller Highwater, belongs to Austin's daddy who used to shrimp and run drugs, but is now too old for both, so he just cruises Georgia to Florida when it is cold.

Pump out boat makng the rounds...and the marshal boarding a sailboat across the way from us.

The passage from Marathon to North Bimini went very well. It started off with a dolphin escort out of the harbor, considered an excellent sign for sailors. The seas were calm with 3-5foot swells, well-lit by a full moon. Winds were east at 15 knots, unfortunately right on our nose, so we motor-sailed. The iron jib is the easiest of our sails to trim! We were accompanied on our journey by S/V Lorian, also a Morgan 41. Lori and Ian are former students of Craig's who have been cruising for a year. It was nice to have someone to chat with on the 20 hour trip.

Our dolphin escort and S/V Lorian.









Goodnight sun, Hello moon.

It was fun to put our new AIS (boat show acquisition) to the test...talk about feeling like a bug on the windshield.

This tanker would have never even felt the fiberglass crunching under his bow....








The AIS shows commercial ship information, as well as closest point of approach(CPA).

The morning after and the approach to North Bimini.

More paperwork, feeling pretty.

Texas flag (required) and Bahamian courtesy flag we raise after clearing customs and immigration.

Bimini Bluewater Marina, our stop for the night and a view across the water.

As mentioned before, cruising is defined as fixing your boat in exotic locales. Well, we have had our first big dose of that. We arrived in Bimini, got checked in and had lunch. After a late afternoon cocktail or two, we are wiped out. But wait, why is the water pump running constantly and we have no leaks?? Uh-oh. We decided the water pump installed in January is bad...we rip it out and replace with the spare, working until 1030pm.