Arrival In Bimini

We’re back in the Bahamas! 

 

The crossing from Miami to Bimini was bouncy but pretty quick.  We were in a pack of six boats making for various entrance ports of the Bahamas so we had plenty of company.  We worked our way slowly through the pack and were the first of the three boats to arrive at Bimini.    Not that it was a race…

 

On arrival at the cut between North and South Bimini, we found that the entrance did not resemble our electronic or paper charts.  There were two large brand new channel buoys that were not on our charts and none of the buoys that were on our charts.  The only thing that seemed in agreement was the note about shifting sand bars on the charts and the breakers we were seeing just beyond those fancy new buoys.  We motored very slowly between the entrance buoys and confirmed the water in front of us was full of breakers so we turned around and headed back out to deep water to regroup and visually plan our route in.

 

We were hailed by another boat that just arrived who wanted to know what we found in the cut.  They had been here before, but said the markers were all new.  They had waypoints plotted from their last visit, so we let them lead the way.  As we headed in, we were hailed by someone with local knowledge who advised us to ignore the new buoys and head straight towards the southern shore and follow the beach in through the cut.  On the bow, Jen said that route looked the best and we headed that way.  The boat we were following didn’t heed these instructions, I assume being more comfortable with their old waypoints, and ran afoul of one of the sandbars.  They were being very cautious so didn’t ground hard and were quickly moving again.  We both then followed the beach in through the cut and were safely in the North Bimini channel off of Alice Town.

 

We took a slip in Blue Water Marina, cleared Bahamas Customs and Immigration, and settled in for a relaxing evening.