Miami to Bahamas

I’m writing this at anchor in Staniel Cay in the Exumas (one of the chains of islands in the Bahamas).  More on this place later, but I have to backtrack quite a number of days since we’ve been too busy for me to write anything lately.

The first photo got left out of my post about Fort Lauderdale, so I’m adding it here. While I was away in San Francisco to see my son, Jake, for a couple of days, Jim got together with cruising friends at “Funky Buddha”, a cool place which is a bar the size of a warehouse with loads of games for patrons – cards, board games, giant Jenga (as seen in the photo), cornhole, bocchi, etc – nobody is on their phone or computer, everybody is playing games with friends. What a concept! In the photo left to right are Bill and Rebecca (s/v Moonlight Serenade), Jim, Jan and Diane (s/v Nora), and Ann and David (s/v Blue Yonder). We spent several wonderful days and evenings with these friends on our boats and on shore. Jan and Diane have a gorgeous home in Fort Lauderdale and one night threw a magnificent going away party for David and Ann, who were leaving soon for Panama.

When I got back from San Francisco, we said bye to everyone and slipped outside at Fort Lauderdale to make the short day trip along the Florida coast to Miami to avoid the dozens of annoying bascule bridges on the ICW between those cities. We spent a couple of days at Dinner Key in Coconut Grove just south of Miami proper. This is a sunset from the mooring there.

In Miami we anchored at Dinner Key in Coconut Grove.  Dinner Key has made an impressive renovation of its main facility, and the surrounding area is now a lovely park. In addition, a building nearby which was under construction a couple of years has been completed. It’s twisted! I love it!

We picked up a mooring ball there for a couple of days to be able to use the Dinner Key laundry and showers. One day we were doing laundry and in walked Vic De Beer, an old cruising friend from our trip 2 years ago. Vic lives in Nova Scotia and had just helped a guy move his boat to Miami. Vic came to visit the “new” Neverland and we had dinner together on board and shared facetime with his wife Iren before he had to leave the next day to fly home.  

While in Miami we spent a day at the Perez Art Museum with friends we’d run into on another Pacific Seacraft in the mooring field.  We all enjoyed a very cool exhibit of art installations by a fellow named Le Parc. At the entrance to the museum was an installation about 20' x 20' of suspended blue plastic cords that you walked through to get into the museum. Like this...

The exhibit was too complex to describe here, but it had lots of colorful sculptures and installations with moving parts and flashing lights...

 At Dinner Key we also ran into old friends, Hayden and Radeen (s/v Island Spirit) from Rock Hall on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake where we had our boats at the same marina.  They invited us to join them and their friends Jim and Loretta (s/v Plan Sea) at the outdoor WallCast Concert in Miami’s Sound Park. Here's are Hayden and Radeen, us, and Loretta and Jim - 

Here is the park where we picnicked and listened to the New World Symphony while watching video of the performance projected on the building below. 

On the way to the concert we strolled along Lincoln Road in Miami for old time's sake. It's mostly a high-end shopping street but we saw some interesting stuff along the way, like this facade and a sign in front of a church:

Hayden and Radeen’s friends, Jim and Loretta, also have an Island Packet (s/v Plan Sea). We made plans to travel together the 50 miles to the Bahamas, since the weather was favorable for a Gulf Stream crossing.  We left Miami cruise ships behind around 6:30 am on February 5^th 

We passed by the industrial part of the port.backlit by the rising sun..

We had an uneventful crossing, arriving in South Bimini by 4:30 pm.  Yup, sailboats are slow compared with the sport fishing powerboats that make this trip to the renowned fishing grounds of Bimini in no time! Here’s a photo of Jim on watch in his life vest, tethered into jacklines in the cockpit as the boat self-steers on autopilot.  We wear these vests and are tethered to the boat on rough passages or at night or if alone in the cockpit. We each take 3-hour watches at night while the other person sleeps (or tries to sleep!) below. The second photo is of Jim taking down the yellow Q flag in Bimini (which you must fly until you’ve officially checked in at any foreign port) and raising the Bahamas courtesy flag.

The next day we took the little ferry for the short ride from South to North Bimini to get Bahamas SIM chips for our IPhones. So FYI, although we get email as usual (when we have service), our U.S. PHONE NUMBERS (AND ALSO TEXT,  OF COURSE) are no longer good until we put the original chips in once we get back to the US in May.

On the way back to the ferry, we stopped to buy some fresh fish directly from fishermen who filleted them for us:

 

The next day we left Bimini around 10 am and motorsailed in pretty benign conditions for 28 hours to get to Highbourne Cay, the north end of the Exuma chain of hundreds of small islands that stretch southwest like a long thin necklace. It always feels odd at first to travel so many miles in the very shallow (only 10’ or so!!) turquoise water of the Great Bahama Bank. Everything gets bluer and bluer as you travel further east. Here’s a photo of the lighthouse at Gun Cay, and another of the shadow of our sail in the water as we crossed the shallow Bank.

After stopping for the night to rest and fill up on fuel and water at Highbourne Cay, we had a fabulous  day sail to Warderick Wells, the 22-mile long Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. This is Jim and Loretta's 38' "Plan Sea". Unfortunately we don’t have a photo yet of Island Spirit, but she’s also an Island Packet.

Hayden got several great photos of Neverland, and here's one that shows why you end up covered with salt water spray by the time you get to your destination. You can see the solar panels on the bimini, the liferaft mounted in front of the dodger, and the yellow containers of diesel fuel lashed to the lifelines - the sure sign of a boat with limited fuel capacity traveling distances in pretty remote places where marinas with fuel are few and far between.  

At Warderick Wells we anchored in a spot protected from the strong north winds which were forecast for a couple of days.  It was Hayden’s birthday on February 10, and we celebrated with a wonderful dinner on board Island Spirit. Hayden baked fresh bread, and Radeen made artichoke Parmesan chicken, green beans with walnuts and a yummy chocolate cherry cake for dessert. In the morning we called on the VHF and Jim got out his kazoo to play Happy Birthday to Hayden.

The Land and Sea Park manages and protects the beaches, trails, reefs and marine life native to the Bahamas. Nothing may be taken from the park (fish, shells, anything) and although it’s possible to pick up a mooring ball for a fee, there is no food, water, fuel, restrooms or trash disposal here.

Since we don't have a water maker on board, getting water is a challenge for us in the Bahamas.  Water is precious here. Some places sell RO (reverse osmosis) water (i.e. fresh water made from salt water) for about 50 cents a gallon.  We end up buying water to fill our two water tanks (about 35 gallons apiece) and keeping extra water in 5-gallon plastic containers lashed on deck along with the fuel.  I guess this is one of the reasons folks seem to by buying bigger and bigger boats for cruising -more tankage for water and fuel and a bigger frig and freezer, another challenge for Neverland. Perishable food like fresh produce, meat, fish, dairy products etc, is very limited here, and very pricey. 😉 

Unfortunately something happened to my photos of Warderick Wells as I transferred them from camera to Mac, so I'll have to take more when we revisit on our way north in the Exumas.

More to come from Staniel Cay later!