2/29/16
Bimini Sands Marina, South Bimini, Bahamas
Position: 25 42.602N, 079 17.947W
Posted by Bill

Finally a last minute window of weather…and we are up and moving at 6 AM. Once in the Atlantic Ocean, we took a 120 degree magnetic heading. You have to head south east to correct for the Gulf Stream current, which can be as high as 3.5 knots. We use an average of 2.5 knots to calculate the correction. The winds were as forecasted and mostly around 10 knots. The seas were really rough for the first couple of hours and very uncomfortable, mostly 3-4 footers every 4 seconds, and hitting us on the beam (side of the boat) which caused an uncomfortable roll. After the first few hours, the seas calmed enough to ease the boat motion and we put up a scrap of sail which also helped some. We held the 120 degree heading until we were about an hour from landfall and we didn’t have to back track south at all, and were in fact south of our target, so we rode the current for the last hour. Yay!! We pulled into Bimini Sands Marina on South Bimini around 2:45 in the afternoon, cleared customs at the airport after a short taxi ride, and went to the beach club restaurant here at Bimini Sands Resort for dinner.

This is a nice place, especially for Bahamian marina standards. They have really nice floating docks and the marina is well protected. The water around the docks looks like a fish aquarium, clear as one, and full of tropical fish.

The weather for the next week looks very settled (finally) so we will get our boats in order tomorrow and head out the next day for Nassau, then on to the Exuma island chain.

The internet connection here is so slow that I could not post pictures. I’ll get some posted when I find a better connection, or when our Bahamas phone has the cellular data activated.