Our last two days in Bimini were spent doing laundry ($22 for 2 loads), provisioning, walking, eating and drinking. The supply boat was scheduled to come in Thursday morning. Alas, it came in late Thursday and didn’t unload until Friday. Friday, we scored on some fresh fruit and veggies!

Not finding ripe bananas, Mike made zucchini bread for our BFF bartender, Danny, and the dude at the grocery store who balked when Mike told him he could make bread with zucchini. Cut up one loaf, put pats of butter on the pieces and gave them away around the marina. Mike is the bomb. Had a lobster and pork loin potlock with the Chuckel family on their catamaran, Last Waltz.

Saturday morning, Mike made biscuits and gravy for the Chuckels on Forever Friday. Later that day, we went with them to Sharky’s to watch the guys feed the bull sharks. It was very cool. There were about 4-5 pretty good size bull sharks, and a few smaller nurse sharks. I couldn’t get any good pictures, but it was a great experience. They are so beautiful (when they are not eating you.) Here is my best shot of the day.

Best picture of the day was of this pelican who had no fear of humans.

Walked up to the Dolphin House, which is a place built by a local gentleman from all recycled materials. Super cool.

Later that day, we got a notification from Chase Bank of a potential fraud alert. Long story short…our credit card had been compromised. We were on the phone with Chase who advised they had to cancel the card. I told them we were out of the country with a finite amount of cash and they had to leave the card open until such time as we got a new card. After much cajoling, we talked them into express mailing a new card to the Bahamas and leaving our card open to only be used via swipe or card reader.

Sunday morning, we FINALLY departed to head east. We had a fairly good weather forecast with some wind and swell predicted for the morning which were supposed to calm in the afternoon. We departed Alice Town at 6:40am to a beautiful sunrise.

And, some pretty crappy seas.

Our seas sucked. We were hoping once we went through the cut between Cat and Gun Cays, they would calm. Just as we were going through the pretty narrow, and skinny cut, our depth sounder decided to stop working. I’m guessing something was jarred loose in one of our violent slams on the breaking waves we were head on into. After getting successfully through the cut, the seas did mellow a very little bit. Then, they just kept getting crummier. The forecast was for winds in the low to mid-teens. They were sustained at about 22-23 knots which may not seem like much, but in these shallow waters makes for an uncomfortable ride!

During our ~92 mile and 10 & 1/2 hour journey, we saw a number of boats we had previously connected with. One was a Pacific Seacraft named Serenity. We got some great shots of her. (Although Forever Friday has been amazing on this journey, and I have nothing but props for my girl, this particular day really had me missing being on a sailboat.)

Our seas absolutely sucked until about 1:30 at which time we got a bit of a respite. The seas and winds had calmed quite a bit right before we got to the Tongue of the Ocean where the Bahama Bank meets the Atlantic Ocean. We then went from depths of 8-10 feet to thousands (we saw 11,000+ depths on our charts). Not surprisingly, we went from 2 foot seas to 5-6 foot breakers on our nose at the point where these shallow waters met the deep. Thankfully, this was relatively short lived.

We pulled into Chub Cay around 5:30. Poor Mike had to spend the next couple hours continuing his attempt diagnosing the sonar issue. To add insult to injury, the AC water pump had lost prime and Mike had to suck-start it (akin to syphoning gas). To reiterate, Mike is the bomb. I made a wonderful dinner, and we had a beautiful sunset.

Sonar thankfully fixed, we had a good night at anchor. Apparently it was so good, we slept through our 5:30am alarm the next morning. Alas, we awoke at 6:30 and had the anchor up by 6:50. Sunrise was beautiful.

There was a forecast for weather coming in at noon that day, and we had about 50 plus miles to go. As the day went on, it looked like the weather was going to be fine until later in the day. Man, oh man, did we have an epic day on the water! Seas were flat, winds were calm and the sea was absolutely stunning! A very exciting thing happened. Mike caught a fish! We have been married over 23 years, have spent so much of it on the water, and I have never seen him catch a fish. And, he has tried! He caught a 37″ dorado (mahi-mahi or dolphin fish). I was so impressed and subsequently learned 37″ is a baby dorado. It was still super cool! (we BBQ’d him that evening…hehe)

It was truly a perfect day on the water. We approached New Providence Island and sailed past Nassau. What a trip! So many horror stories from cruisers about here; we wanted nothing to do with it. That said, the water as we passed was incredible!

We rounded the east end of the island, three miles offshore to avoid the coral heads, and went toward the southeast portion toward Palm Cay. The entrance here was beautiful.

We pulled up to the fuel dock and were greeted by Demaro, the dock master with whom I had spoken the night prior. What a gem! Demaro and his crew were wonderful! (Mike baked them bread.) Palm Cay resort is absolutely stunning. After Mike did a mega-wash of the boat, we had fresh mahi-mahi on The Lower Place for dinner.

Today, we did some chores. I took advantage of being at a resort and paid the $15 to go to the pool. The water was cooled and perfect for laps. The view from the pool did not suck.

Went back to the boat, grabbed Mike and went back to the beach to have lunch. View was gorgeous.

Right before 5:00, our new credit cards arrived! Yay! Kudos to Chase Sapphire! Was very worried that would take much longer.

Charlie and Robin of The Lower Place booked one of the courtesy cars which we took to the new Solomon’s grocery store. Very nice store. Prices on most stuff wasn’t too bad. Other stuff…a joke!

Bought some beautiful NY strips and asparagus and had a wonderful dinner with Charlie and Robin aboard FF.

Weather willing, plan to sail to Allan Cay tomorrow afternoon, then down to the Exuma Land and Sea Park. Cannot believe it’s almost March.

Happy Tuesday! M&M