BAHAMA WINTER, 2012-13 - Indiantown to Bimini

We've been this route so many times in the past 9 years of living aboard in the winters, I'm finding it difficult not to take the same pictures enroute. If you'd like to see last year's adventures, just scroll down through the "older blogs". The pics I'm starting to post this winter will just be filling in some blanks for us to see later back at home in Durango when we get too old to handle this lifestyle. One of the benefits of getting older is that now we're starting to go places and do things "AGAIN, FOR THE FIRST TIME", because our memory is getting bad. For any of our Facebook friends, several of these pics might have been posted on FB as well, but lots haven't. Sorry for the duplication.

Launching Summer Breeze at Indiantown Marina, Nov 2, 2012

Having said our goodbyes at sundowner, we're prepared to head downriver in the morning.

Nov 10 - passing through the St Lucie River lock on the way to Stuart and the Atlantic Coast.

Nov 15 - "close encounter of the ship kind" while entering Ft Lauderdale's Port Everglades after a day's sail down the outside from Lake Worth

Nov 15-18 - looking down on Summer Breeze at the City of Ft Lauderdale's Las Olas Marina, from the Las Olas Bridge looking south

Nov 19 - heading south under the 17th St Causeway Bridge at Port Everglades

Nov 19 - We were able to steal a crewmember, 1st Class Swabbie Jayvontay, for the ICW trip down to Miami. The floggings will continue until attitudes improve!

Hiking on the penisula at the Marine Stadium anchorage

This is a pic of the actual "Marine Stadium"; it has seen better days. It used to be a real concert hotspot; Jimmy Buffett jumped off of the water-barge stage into the drink here once.

Lots of skulling clubs use Marine Stadium for their workouts . . . good entertainment.

Nov 24 - We anchored off the beach in Biscayne Bay at Virginia Key for the night so Spring and the kids could come play, dink, & swim. Nancy coaches Charlie on technique.

Nov 25 - Dec 17 - We took a mooring ball for the month at Dinner Key Moorings in Coconut Grove, Miami. This is the view looking down onto the marina, moorings, & adjacent sailing club.

Sunrise over Key Biscayne

Cormorant drying out.

Local sailors racing right by the boat through the mooring field

Linda Adams visited from Denver on her way to Cuba, so we took a little tour out through what's left of Biscayne Bay's Stiltsville. Only 7 left; there used to be several dozen.

Nancy & Linda having lunch in the Panorama Peruvian Restaurant atop the Sonesta Hotel in the Grove.

Dec 16 - We anchored the night out off of the southern end of Key Biscayne in anticipation of a weather window for crossing the Gulf Stream the following morning.

Dec 17 - We weren't disappointed. We pulled anchor at 5:30am the next morning and headed the 10 hours to the Bimini Chain. We dodged a half dozen ships during the day within a mile. The first third of the 50 nautical miles was flat & glassy, the middle third was perfect 10-12k all-sheets-up sailing with the wind on the beam out of the south, the final third was 18-20knots of whitecaps and increasingly rougher seas.

By 2:30pm we were approaching Bimini and the unbelievably green waters of the Bahama Bank.

Beginning Dec 17, we made Bimini Sands Marina on South Bimini our home through the holidays. This is a pic I took while sitting in our slip looking back out the entranceway to the marina . . . reading yet another Clive Cussler novel. Lots more to come from Bimini!