It's not that we didn't like Bimini. The customs officials were nice and didn't hassle us about not checking in right away, even letting us come in by dinghy to check in rather than bringing the boat to a marina. But a strong cold front was predicted to bring high winds on Monday, and although the anchorage was nicely protected, the holding ground was pretty scary. Even scarier were two powerboaters who came in together the day after we did, one[*] anchoring practically on top of us, the other anchoring practically on top of his friend. That night the further one dragged into the closer one, and after they got their ground tackle straightened out, he moved to practically on top of us on our other side. In addition to the Two Stooges, locals in fast and loud powerboats constantly buzzed through the anchorage, several 60-80 foot cargo vessels came through (maneuvering among the anchored yachts with little room to spare), and the channel does double duty as the local seaplane airstrip. Not an atmosphere conducive to lingering.
Before we left, we checked out the island. The settlement nearest the harbor, Alice Town, is a typical Bahamian town, with brightly colored buildings (some abandoned mid-construction, some falling apart after years of little maintenance in the tough salt air environment) crammed together along narrow, barely-paved roads. For a big (relatively speaking) town, it was mostly pretty dead. Most of the marinas had only one or two boats at the docks. Not much was happening at the Compleat Angler bar, but we ducked in to look at the walls full of Hemingway memorabilia. We had a nice walk in the early evening along the beach road, looking back out toward the big continent we knew was only 50 miles away, although all we saw was ocean. A sailboat was anchored off the beach; though it was in the lee of the island, the boat bucked and rolled in the swells. It did not look like a very comfortable spot.
We left the Bimini anchorage around noon on Friday. As soon as we negotiated the channel between the shoals we put up the sails and turned off the motor. The wind was from the south, directly behind us as we sailed parallel to the beach in around 50 feet of water.
"That sailboat still there?" Britt asked as I scanned the island with our binoculars. At first I didn't see it. Then I noticed the mast, at a most unpleasant angle -- the boat was high and dry, up on the beach! We tried to figure out how and why it had ended up there. The wind was coming from the wrong direction to push it up on the shore, but maybe the waves broke the anchor loose and there was enough onshore current and swell.
Our first destination was a dive site listed in our guidebook known as Bimini Roads. We anchored under sail, a first for us; we shortened sail until we were moving fairly slowly and I guided Windom up to just downwind of the waypoint, then turned into the wind as Britt dropped the anchor. We set a range on shore and determined we were not moving, but after diving on the anchor we have no idea why we weren't moving, since our CQR was just lying on its side on the hard bottom. Only the weight of the anchor and chain kept us from drifting off to Grand Bahama.
We pulled on our wetsuits and snorkeling gear and jumped in. Bimini Roads is a long row of square, flat rocks, laid out like paving stones marking a road in 15 feet of water. Some people claim that it's obviously not a natural formation and must therefore be an old road to Atlantis. In my opinion, some people have overactive imaginations. But the rocks are swarming with fish, especially at one end where undercuts formed little crevices and caves, and it was delightful to be in the water again looking at all the sea life. Many hundreds of small yellowtail snappers and other little fish swirled in great schools across the rocks, and every so often we saw a glasseye snapper, porgy, or small grouper. One school of huge amberjacks and crevalle jacks swam past, accompanied by two very large nurse sharks, and we saw a few barracuda as well. Britt had his spear along, of course, but all the fish were either too large or too small to go after.
Then we followed the "road" to its other end, where another "road" intersected it. This one looked much less like a road and more like a bunch of rocks, so of course the tourists looking for legends of Atlantis are steered to the other one. But it was here that Britt spotted two pairs of antennae poking out from under a "paving stone". He speared one lobster and swam back to the boat to deposit it in the dink, while I remained hovering above the other, to mark the spot until he could come back and get its roommate. Mmmm, fresh Bahamian lobster for dinner. This is what we're here for. Not the bars, not the beaches, but the great underwater world, where we can float around and look at all the strange creatures there -- and then eat them.
We sailed off our anchor, another first, and continued north. After rounding North Rock, we turned east and entered the shallow Great Bahama Bank. The wind got lighter and lighter and eventually died completely around 5:30, so we fired up the engine and motored until nearly 11 p.m., when we decided we'd gone far enough for the day. We dropped anchor in the middle of nowhere and tried to get some sleep, although things were a little bouncy with leftover swell, and we both woke often.
We bounced awake shortly before 7 and got underway. The wind was only up to 4 knots, so it was motor time again. While underway I made a big lobster omelette (with last night's leftovers) for breakfast -- yum yum! The wind slowly built, and it was coming from the east, the direction we were heading, but by the time it got up to 8 knots we were past the Northwest Channel Beacon and in deeper water, ready to turn south toward Morgan's Bluff, and we were able to sail the rest of the way.
Andros is not heavily visited by cruising yachts, and there was only one other sailboat in the outer anchorage. When we dinghied into the inner, commercial harbor, we found a passel of them, though: five boats anchored with stern lines to trees on shore, all rafted up together. Mostly Canadians, we'd seen them in Miami and Bimini. They invited us to slip in beside them, which we might do when the front comes through later this week, but for now we'd rather have the solitude and breezes of the outer harbor.
At the commercial dock, several men were loading grapefruit from a truck onto a barge. Grapefruit were everywhere: in crates, on pallets, and rolling around loose on the ground. Britt picked up one and asked a worker if we could have one; "Take all you want!" was the reply. We took four, amid offers of, "We bring a crate out to your boat for you!" We split one the next morning with breakfast, and it was red, juicy and sweet.
We hiked around a little, intending to go for a longer bike ride the following day, but the morning was bleak and threatened rain. Instead we went snorkeling. We first tried the reefs on the island's east side. With the easterly wind, conditions were pretty rough, and all we saw were fish too small to go after. (We let baby fish grow up to be big fish before we spear 'em. Besides, they're harder to hit when they're small!) We then tried a couple of spots northwest of the harbor. The water was very shallow, and there were several odd formations, sort of mini-blue-holes of sand several feet deeper than the surrounding grassy bottom. At the third spot we tried, Britt hopped over the edge and immediately got a small mutton snapper. (Small here is a relative term. The other mutton snappers we have caught, all by trolling a line, have made meals for 6 people. This one was just big enough for lunch for the two of us.)
Now that we're in da islands, mon, we're living on island time. This does not mean that we party all night and go to bed late, waking after noon. No, we jump out of bed early so we can get the weatherfaxes which start rolling in at 7:30 a.m. Last year, the NOAA station NMG broadcast a surface analysis and four wind/wave forecasts, for "now" plus 12, 24, and 36 hours, but this year their forecasts are for "now" plus 24, 48, and 72 hours. So we have four days of wind predictions, and if we get the evening weatherfaxes as well (which we usually do) we have a twice-a-day picture of what's coming our way.
The problem is that lately the morning forecaster and the evening forecaster have been disagreeing with each other. Right now, the morning sequence shows a cold front hitting us on Tuesday with north winds of 15-20, while the evening sequence has the front hanging out well to our north and disippating before it gets close. So we're not sure who to believe, or what to do. If a front comes we need to move, either to the inner harbor, to Fresh Creek further down the coast, or to another place entirely. On the one hand it would be fun to explore more of Andros. On the other hand, the reefs are open to the wind and seas and hard to dive on, unlike the Exumas where there are lots of protected snorkeling spots. We would also prefer to sail to our next destination, rather than motor. I guess we'll get the evening faxes...and then the morning faxes...and then make up our minds.