Stuck in Bimini

 We have been trying to get out of Bimini for three days, but the weather has not cooperated. Monday it was just blowing a little too hard. Tuesday it was just too rough to get out through the channel.  Hopefully we can leave tomorrow. We don't really mind being in Bimini but we've been here since last Thursday and we've seen everything that we want to see. So with a little luck we will be heading to Nassau tomorrow.

Here is some of the rough water I was talking about.

 

A little of the local wildlife

 

 

We spent the last few days getting through the Everglades and over to Elliott Key, where we were going to make the crossing over to the Bahamas.

While we were going through the everglades a crazy storm came up really quickly on us.  There wasn't much rain but the wind was intense.  We had both sails up and we were able to drop the main sail but the jib got torn a bit before we could pull it in.  So I spent two days hand sewing the jib and got it done in time for us to make the crossing.  

Wes checked the wind several times before we decided Thursday was the best day to cross.  Well, windfinder lied to us.  The winds were only supposed to be 10-15 mph but they were more around 25 mph.  Needless to say, it was a very tough crossing.  But we made it to Bimini and it is beautiful. We're going to spend a couple of days here in South Bimini and then head over to Nassau.  I forgot how beautiful the water is here.

  These were the storm clouds that snuck up on us.

The beach where we are currently anchored

Saw this spotted ray by the marina where we checked in

It's hard to tell but this is a shark that was also at the dock

Me working on sewing the jib sail

The Everglades.

 We got to the Everglades.  That is, we're tied up at Everglades Isle RV campground. Its about 3 miles up a winding river. There are a lot of air boats going up and down the river. I guess to look for alligators. We haven't seen any of those yet but we aren't that far up the river.

Yesterday I finally got my new mainsail fully installed. We got a new mast track two days ago and tried to put on the sail, but we didn't change the baton holders from the old sail to the new sail. Yesterday we got that done and today, sometime, we will try out the new sail.

Karen and I have lost some of our boating skills. The gulf has had some minor swells on it . They don't bother you while you are sailing but they do make for some 2 foot waves at the shoreline. We went in to get some sea shell and when we tried to leave we both got soaked. We used to be able to get the dingy through the waves with little problem. But I guess we forgot how to do that correctly. We just have to practice some more.

We bought some nice shrimp off the shrimp boat. They are pink shrimp and came with the heads still on. Here is a picture of the shrimp boat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on the water

 Today we got back on the water. We sailed from Hearando Beach to Clearwater Florida. It took about seven hours. We had a little trouble with the boat but it seems to have fixed itself. We had left to boat for a month so something was bound to malfunction. We got to Clearwater and found they had the worlds largest rubber duckie. I have no idea why this makes people happy but it does seem to. Other than that not much happening. We need to get to Fort Myers by Wednesday so they can fix the mast track. Other than that we will watch some football and some hockey.  We got a cold front moving in tomorrow. High temp of 69. I guess that isn't to bad for Janurary.

 

We made it back to Hernando Beach on January 6th after spending a wonderful Christmas back in Colorado and the boat was still afloat-Yay!!

We had a bunch of stuff to get ready to take off again so we've been working on things for the past two days and we will be heading out tomorrow. We will be taking our time because we ordered a new mast track before we went home because the old one pulled away from the mast so we weren't able to use the main sail. They won't be able to install the new one until next Thursday and we are meeting them in Fort Myers to do this.  It will be so nice to have the main sail again.  It's only around 127 knots to Fort Myers which would only take around 4 days so we will probably spend a couple days in Clearwater and take our time getting down there.  I'm hoping to still be able to spend a couple of days in Key West before heading to the Bahamas but we will see how things go.  You never know on a sailboat haha.

There is a great place that Barry Gustafson turned us on to when we were here in November.  It's called the Freezer and and it has the best shrimp ever.  You can get a pound of steamed shrimp for $22, the beers are $2 and they have $4 margaritas on tap.  They only take cash and all of the the seafood is caught fresh~it is the best and if you're ever in this area you should stop there.  It's in Homosassa and definitely out of the way but so worth it.

Three of the four grandkids when we visited Blossoms at the Denver Botanical Gardens

The Shrimp at the Freezer 

The canal at night.