Thursday: Arrived late after a very delayed flight and dinghied out to SV Frea with her christmas lights twinkling.
Friday: Woke up to get to work! Scrapped Frea's underside, rented dive tanks, tried unsucessfully to fix a generator, provisioned, printed bahamas documents, and set off for Bimini!
Saturday: A rough overnight crossing against the golf stream had us arriving at the Bimini in the wee hours of the morning. We puckered our butts coming around the south Gun Cay cut to find some protection to anchor on the south east side of the Cay. We proceeded to sleep until 10:30am and slowly got moving to our first shake down dive site, the infamous Sapona! At just 10-15 feet it was a great way to test our gear and our new gopro. There was tons of life on the wreck and a very friendly ray that was just circling around and around. We got in some navigation training skills for our advanced liscense. Back on the boat we packed up and had a beautiful sunset cruise to the main Bimini channel. This is a VERY skinny channel and we bumped ground in the very beginning due to shoals shifting into the channel. We made it though! Anchored all the way in by the Hilton Resort and ate spicy noodles before passing out.
Sunday: We woke up to a very silly sight. Our buddies from MIami had tried to come join us in the middle of the night and had run aground in about a foot of water just outside of the channel. We threw out empty dive tanks in the dinghy and checked in with them on our way to the dive shop and immagration check-in. They were all ok just waiting on high tide so we went to run all our errands. By the time we were headed back they had been pulled off by a buch of other cruisers with dinghies and were safely anchored. We loaded back onto Frea and weighed anchor to head out to dive. Our first site was Kinks a 55ft reef just north of the Bimini channel with a mooring ball just under the surface. It was a great dive with very healthy coral and lots of reef fish. We then made our way to Turtle Rocks North where there was also a nice surface mooring and dove at sunset alond the rock structures. Not a ton of life but I did spot a very large bull shark just off the deep. It was a very relaxing shallow 10-35ft dive. Once we were all back on the boat and in dry warm clothes we cast off for Honeymoon Harbor at the north end of Gun Cay. We anchored in ~11ft of water, ate some brauts and mac and cheese, and got in the dinghy for a spectacular bonfire on the beach. The boys smoke pipes while Em and I chatted and tended the fire. We got back to Frea and took Mamajuana shots for midnight and watched the fireworks on the cay. We were all asleep by 12:30.
Monday: We woke up early and wheied anchor to head back to Miami. It was a quick trip with many comical errors and delays but it was wonderful. The seas had calmed for our return trip and we all tood some good naps and soaked in the sun. Huge thanks to previous Baltimore sailirs Josh and Emily for hosting us again for an epic adventure.