Bobby P.
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2018
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- Fluid Motion Model
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- The Retreat
Bahamas Five Day Adventure - FYI, a lengthy post...
I’ve already covered the navigational details in other posts, so here I will just give a narrative of our Bimini excursion.
We left No Name Harbor on Monday, May 24, 9:30 am. No Name Harbor is located on the North end of Biscayne Bay, Florida. This is pretty much directly across from Miami. We arrived to the shores of Bimini’s crystal clear blue and turquoise waters around 1:30pm.
Day 1. The first thing we did when we were a few miles from Bimini was fly your yellow quarantine flag and make our way to immigrations and customs. The easiest and closest place to take care of your boarder entry needs is the north end of Bimini, so this is where we went. You can do this by stopping at one of the marinas, just inside the Port entrance. You can find the Port entrance by shooting a line from where ever you are leaving near Miami, straight to Bimini Sands Marina (This is a very good landmark, but no reason to visit – it seems like a condo complex of some sort). When you get about 200 yards from the entrance of Bimini Sands, make a hard left and you will be in the channel for the Port Entrance. You will be rounding a red nun on your port side. The Port entrance is not that big and you won’t have ocean liners or anything like that coming through. About a mile up (North) in the Port Entrance, you will see marinas on your left. These are not exotic high scale resorts, but rather smaller home-style marinas. You can tie up at any of these to go to immigrations and customs. You either tip them at the dock or they will just charge you a fee. Bimini Big Game Fishing Club is a popular one. They charge $25 to tie up. We were staying next door at Bluewater Marina for $1.25 per foot, so we saw no reason to go to the Big Game Club. Bimini Blue Water Marina is owned by a local family. Great place to spend a night or two while figuring things out. Easy to find, too. It is painted blue.
Once you are tied up, only the captain can leave the boat. You can fill your paperwork out online, print it, and bring it with you. We did none of that. At this point with COVID, we had to complete a Health Visa and pay for insurance. You must do this in advance (about 3 days) and you will receive verification by email for clearance. It takes about 24 hours. I had to bring proof of this to immigration. They also asked for proof of vaccination. You do not need COVID tests anymore, if you are vaccinated. Make sure you bring all of your boat paperwork (documentation/registration). They will ask to see the documents, not just a picture. And be sure to have the passports of everyone who is traveling with you.
Immigrations check in is about a half mile by foot from Bimini Big Game/Blue Water Marina. It’ll be on your left, in the same building as the local police station. You will be in Alice Town, btw. They ask where you will be staying and just give them the address of your first stop (Marina). At immigration, they will ask about your health visa, check your passports and you will fill out some paperwork. Nothing intimidating about the process. A little strange though, I had to ask them to turn on the lights so I could see what they wanted me to fill out.
After leaving immigration you will walk back about one quarter mile to customs, which will be on you left. It is actually in the entrance of the Big Game Club. Fill out some more paper work there, give them $150 (this also includes your fishing license) and you are on your way.
When I got back to the boat, we peeled off the dock and set off to get some more blue and turquoise water. We generally like to anchor our, but wanted to have a no-worry first night, so we made arrangements to stay at Blue water marina. We left the lines in our slip and slipped out.
We headed back out the Port entrance. Again, using Bimini Sands as our landmark, we hung a right when we reached this mark, rounding the same red nun, this time to starboard. Check the chart here. In about 100 yards or so you will clear a shoal and can hang another right and you are now heading north along the Bimini coast. This water is amazingly blue and clear. We could see the bottom up to about 60 feet. We headed north about a mile or so and we were pretty much where the Blue Water Marina would be, but on the ocean side. We dropped the anchor in 25 feet of crystal clear water and shut everything down. The Admiral put a few chairs out on our swim platform and the I made some margaritas. This is a pretty cool place to hang. A few other boats were doing the same and looking like they were there for the night. We took a dip. Water was nice, but not too warm. Kinda perfect. We then launched the dink and ran it up on to the beach. There was a hut-bar on the bluff here, so we got a couple of local beers, sat in the sand and looked out on our R31 as we watched an incredible sunset. Following that, we went back to our slip and had a great night of sleep.
Day 2 We took a walk around Alice Town. We found a baker. If you don’t know it, Bimini is known for its bread. It is a nice big sweet-loaf white bread. Delicious! We pulled off chunks as we walked down the street back to our boat. One thing I want to mention here - Bimini got clobbered in the last hurricane and the locals have not yet recovered. We were careful to spend money freely, not to haggle, and realized that the locals make the least amount of money that goes through this county. We tried to support the local economy while we were there. All of the locals we encountered were extremely friendly.
On the afternoon of this day, we went out fishing. About a mile off shore and in 2500 feet of water, we promptly lost a dingy painter overboard, which wrapped itself around the prop. I’d have to go over and cut it free. Every time I got in the water, a large remora fish kept trying to make a run for my head. We eventually decided we had to catch it and we did! We dumped him in the dink while I dived with a knife to cut the painter off. After freeing the painter, we then freed the fish. Following this excitement, we decided to look for where we would spend the night. We anchored out that night just south of Bimini in a shallow well protected spot called Nixon’s Harbor. On our way, we went by the Sapona, a sunken ship known for excellent snorkeling.
Day 3 We went further south to Honeymoon Harbor. This is a very cool anchorage, where you can swim with Nurse sharks and rays. It is pretty spectacular. Most people anchor up or near the beach here. With our shoal draft Ranger, we could easily make our way into a very cool lagoon and have a paradise anchorage all to our self.
At the end of the day we headed back to Bimini Blue. We stayed there another night so that we’d have internet the next day for meetings that we needed to virtually attend. We had dinner at a restaurant that may have been in Browns Marina (just a few buildings down). Awesome yellow tail snapper and good drinks. Throughout our stay, we bought lobster, stone crab and conch from folks who would come to the marina to peddle them. The marina owners verified that it was ok to buy from them. We later realized that while we were out boating around, we could buy right from locals who were fishing.
Day 4 I got up and went for a jog. There are only two roads in this part of Bimini, the main road and the road up on the bluff. I like the road on the bluff, where you can look out on the ocean.
After our meetings, we went out about 2 miles off sure and did some trolling. We caught a 4 foot barracuda! Lots of fun. After releasing the fish, we continued to head south about 12-14 nautical miles until we reached Cat Point. Stunning views of the shoreline and endless blue water. We rounded the Cat Point and headed up into some shallows and anchored in an area called Dollar Harbor. We saw lots of turtles and caught some small yellow tail snappers.
Day 5 we headed North again, passing our first evening’s anchorage and continuing to the north end of Bimini. We anchored off the beach on the very north end of Bimini, just passed the ferry terminal. Here, we could take the dinghy to “Bimini Road”, a serries of rocks and choral, where you get in the water with your snorkeling gear, hold on to the painter and let the current drift you for an underwater tour. Lots of sea-life and crystal clear water. We took turns doing this.
At the end of the day, we decided we’d go back and take another night at Bimini Blue. We wanted to fuel up and not have to deal with the worries of anchor drag, etc. When we got back to Bimini Blue, there was no availability. We fueled up, went for a walk, and then headed back to Nixon Harbor for a nice sunset. We cooked up a bunch of fish we had left, including some conch that I bought, and had a nice sunset feast.
On Day six, we pulled anchor and headed back to the Florida coast.
About 3 miles out, I used CBP ROAM app to virtually make our customs entrance. W did a video chat with a customs officer and we were in. We headed back to No Name harbor for a nice evening on the hook and spent some time reflecting on our amazing trip.
This was a great trip and we will do it again. Next time we will plan for more time. Bimini is a great first trip and easy to navigate. In the future we will want to explore more of the islands and get remote for longer periods. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Best,
Bobby and May
I’ve already covered the navigational details in other posts, so here I will just give a narrative of our Bimini excursion.
We left No Name Harbor on Monday, May 24, 9:30 am. No Name Harbor is located on the North end of Biscayne Bay, Florida. This is pretty much directly across from Miami. We arrived to the shores of Bimini’s crystal clear blue and turquoise waters around 1:30pm.
Day 1. The first thing we did when we were a few miles from Bimini was fly your yellow quarantine flag and make our way to immigrations and customs. The easiest and closest place to take care of your boarder entry needs is the north end of Bimini, so this is where we went. You can do this by stopping at one of the marinas, just inside the Port entrance. You can find the Port entrance by shooting a line from where ever you are leaving near Miami, straight to Bimini Sands Marina (This is a very good landmark, but no reason to visit – it seems like a condo complex of some sort). When you get about 200 yards from the entrance of Bimini Sands, make a hard left and you will be in the channel for the Port Entrance. You will be rounding a red nun on your port side. The Port entrance is not that big and you won’t have ocean liners or anything like that coming through. About a mile up (North) in the Port Entrance, you will see marinas on your left. These are not exotic high scale resorts, but rather smaller home-style marinas. You can tie up at any of these to go to immigrations and customs. You either tip them at the dock or they will just charge you a fee. Bimini Big Game Fishing Club is a popular one. They charge $25 to tie up. We were staying next door at Bluewater Marina for $1.25 per foot, so we saw no reason to go to the Big Game Club. Bimini Blue Water Marina is owned by a local family. Great place to spend a night or two while figuring things out. Easy to find, too. It is painted blue.
Once you are tied up, only the captain can leave the boat. You can fill your paperwork out online, print it, and bring it with you. We did none of that. At this point with COVID, we had to complete a Health Visa and pay for insurance. You must do this in advance (about 3 days) and you will receive verification by email for clearance. It takes about 24 hours. I had to bring proof of this to immigration. They also asked for proof of vaccination. You do not need COVID tests anymore, if you are vaccinated. Make sure you bring all of your boat paperwork (documentation/registration). They will ask to see the documents, not just a picture. And be sure to have the passports of everyone who is traveling with you.
Immigrations check in is about a half mile by foot from Bimini Big Game/Blue Water Marina. It’ll be on your left, in the same building as the local police station. You will be in Alice Town, btw. They ask where you will be staying and just give them the address of your first stop (Marina). At immigration, they will ask about your health visa, check your passports and you will fill out some paperwork. Nothing intimidating about the process. A little strange though, I had to ask them to turn on the lights so I could see what they wanted me to fill out.
After leaving immigration you will walk back about one quarter mile to customs, which will be on you left. It is actually in the entrance of the Big Game Club. Fill out some more paper work there, give them $150 (this also includes your fishing license) and you are on your way.
When I got back to the boat, we peeled off the dock and set off to get some more blue and turquoise water. We generally like to anchor our, but wanted to have a no-worry first night, so we made arrangements to stay at Blue water marina. We left the lines in our slip and slipped out.
We headed back out the Port entrance. Again, using Bimini Sands as our landmark, we hung a right when we reached this mark, rounding the same red nun, this time to starboard. Check the chart here. In about 100 yards or so you will clear a shoal and can hang another right and you are now heading north along the Bimini coast. This water is amazingly blue and clear. We could see the bottom up to about 60 feet. We headed north about a mile or so and we were pretty much where the Blue Water Marina would be, but on the ocean side. We dropped the anchor in 25 feet of crystal clear water and shut everything down. The Admiral put a few chairs out on our swim platform and the I made some margaritas. This is a pretty cool place to hang. A few other boats were doing the same and looking like they were there for the night. We took a dip. Water was nice, but not too warm. Kinda perfect. We then launched the dink and ran it up on to the beach. There was a hut-bar on the bluff here, so we got a couple of local beers, sat in the sand and looked out on our R31 as we watched an incredible sunset. Following that, we went back to our slip and had a great night of sleep.
Day 2 We took a walk around Alice Town. We found a baker. If you don’t know it, Bimini is known for its bread. It is a nice big sweet-loaf white bread. Delicious! We pulled off chunks as we walked down the street back to our boat. One thing I want to mention here - Bimini got clobbered in the last hurricane and the locals have not yet recovered. We were careful to spend money freely, not to haggle, and realized that the locals make the least amount of money that goes through this county. We tried to support the local economy while we were there. All of the locals we encountered were extremely friendly.
On the afternoon of this day, we went out fishing. About a mile off shore and in 2500 feet of water, we promptly lost a dingy painter overboard, which wrapped itself around the prop. I’d have to go over and cut it free. Every time I got in the water, a large remora fish kept trying to make a run for my head. We eventually decided we had to catch it and we did! We dumped him in the dink while I dived with a knife to cut the painter off. After freeing the painter, we then freed the fish. Following this excitement, we decided to look for where we would spend the night. We anchored out that night just south of Bimini in a shallow well protected spot called Nixon’s Harbor. On our way, we went by the Sapona, a sunken ship known for excellent snorkeling.
Day 3 We went further south to Honeymoon Harbor. This is a very cool anchorage, where you can swim with Nurse sharks and rays. It is pretty spectacular. Most people anchor up or near the beach here. With our shoal draft Ranger, we could easily make our way into a very cool lagoon and have a paradise anchorage all to our self.
At the end of the day we headed back to Bimini Blue. We stayed there another night so that we’d have internet the next day for meetings that we needed to virtually attend. We had dinner at a restaurant that may have been in Browns Marina (just a few buildings down). Awesome yellow tail snapper and good drinks. Throughout our stay, we bought lobster, stone crab and conch from folks who would come to the marina to peddle them. The marina owners verified that it was ok to buy from them. We later realized that while we were out boating around, we could buy right from locals who were fishing.
Day 4 I got up and went for a jog. There are only two roads in this part of Bimini, the main road and the road up on the bluff. I like the road on the bluff, where you can look out on the ocean.
After our meetings, we went out about 2 miles off sure and did some trolling. We caught a 4 foot barracuda! Lots of fun. After releasing the fish, we continued to head south about 12-14 nautical miles until we reached Cat Point. Stunning views of the shoreline and endless blue water. We rounded the Cat Point and headed up into some shallows and anchored in an area called Dollar Harbor. We saw lots of turtles and caught some small yellow tail snappers.
Day 5 we headed North again, passing our first evening’s anchorage and continuing to the north end of Bimini. We anchored off the beach on the very north end of Bimini, just passed the ferry terminal. Here, we could take the dinghy to “Bimini Road”, a serries of rocks and choral, where you get in the water with your snorkeling gear, hold on to the painter and let the current drift you for an underwater tour. Lots of sea-life and crystal clear water. We took turns doing this.
At the end of the day, we decided we’d go back and take another night at Bimini Blue. We wanted to fuel up and not have to deal with the worries of anchor drag, etc. When we got back to Bimini Blue, there was no availability. We fueled up, went for a walk, and then headed back to Nixon Harbor for a nice sunset. We cooked up a bunch of fish we had left, including some conch that I bought, and had a nice sunset feast.
On Day six, we pulled anchor and headed back to the Florida coast.
About 3 miles out, I used CBP ROAM app to virtually make our customs entrance. W did a video chat with a customs officer and we were in. We headed back to No Name harbor for a nice evening on the hook and spent some time reflecting on our amazing trip.
This was a great trip and we will do it again. Next time we will plan for more time. Bimini is a great first trip and easy to navigate. In the future we will want to explore more of the islands and get remote for longer periods. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Best,
Bobby and May
