Marathon to Bimini

By Capt. Scott Buckley

Things came together quickly at Marathon.  As originally planned we were to sail from Marathon to Bimini across the Gulf Stream.  On two prior occasions our plans fell apart.  The first time our outboard motor had to be worked on and the parts had not arrived and the second time our buddy boat experienced engine problems. 

Our buddy boat SV Alice Mae had some luck getting her parts and finding a marina that could get her ready quickly.  It looked like like they would be ready Tuesday Jan. 20, 2015 in the afternoon which was fortunate as it did not look like there would be another weather window for another 5 days. 
We made the boat ready and headed into the Marathon City Marina to wash up some laundry and do some final provisioning.  We agreed to split the chores.  Tamera would head to the store to provision and I would sort the laundry.  When I got to the laundry the power was out.  I made a call to my friend Bill and Anita there in Marathon and asked if I could do the laundry there.  Thankfully they saved the day.

We dropped the mooring ball at 14:00 and headed to the fuel dock for take on diesel before heading out.  We took on fuel and left the Marathon harbor.  It was strange to actually be headed to Bimini after 2 months waiting in Boot Key harbor.
We passed Sombrero Lighthouse at 15:30 that afternoon with 118 nm to the entrance to Bimini Harbor.

We continued sailing south southeast from Sombrero Lighthouse, not in the direction of Bimini in the northeast, to pick up the Gulf Stream.  We sailed until the water depth was 250 ft and did not pick up the stream.  We continued SSE to a water depth of 450 feet, where the depth instrument stopped picking up the bottom any longer and still did not pick up the stream.  We continued to a depth of 600 ft. (by the charted depth) and still did not pick up the stream.  The report we had received that the Gulf Stream was 1 mile south on the Sombrero Key lighthouse were not correct or out of date. 
We made our turn to the NE towards Bimini but were barely doing 5 knots.  At this rate we would not make Bimini in time to beat the weather.  I talked with Dave on SV Alice Mae and he thought we should just keep going and hope we pick up the stream in a couple of hours.
That night a little after 19:00 Tamera called down as I was coming on watch that she thought we were picking up the Gulf Stream as our speed had increased from 5 knots to 6 knots.  In the next two hours our speed would continue to increase to 7 knots and then 8 knots.  There were periods on time when we were flying alone at 8.5 knots with minimal winds and the engine only chugging along at 40%.
All the time lost from taking longer to pick up the stream than was anticipated was being made up by a very fast running Gulf Stream.  I found it incredible to consider.

 The mighty stream

The Gulf Stream in this area is 45 nm across and 2700 deep and moving at 3.5 to 4 knot. That is a cross sectional area of 737,748,000 sq. ft. that is moving at moving at 24,288 ft / hr..  That is 134,388,200,000,000 gallons/hr or 37,330,050,000 gallons/sec.  37 billion gallons per sec.  I can’t really fathom that number.  That would be enough water to fill 3.7 million good sized swimming pools every second.  Even that number is too staggering. so what about those big Olympic swimming pools.  Well this flow would ONLY fill 76,821 of those per second.
While this is impressive it is worth noting that the Gulf Stream is not the biggest ocean current out there. 

The Gulf Stream runs right up to the shores at Bimini.  As you approach Bimini and see you are only a mile of two from shore the water under the boat is still 1/2 mile deep.

Approach to Bimini

As we made our way into Bimini we noted we could clearly see the bottom while the depth gauge read 55 ft.  As we continued into the harbor entrance the water shallowed to 8.5 ft. and it took everything I had to not freak out because it look like it was only inches deep. 
We tied up at Blue Water Marina in Alice Town in Bimini Cay at around 10AM on the 21st of Jan.

Bimini Harbor

You can’t tell it but we are sitting in 11 ft of water here.

 

I still had to checking to the Bahamas so we raised our yellow flag and I headed into town to Immigration and then Customs to clear the vessel and crew into the Bahamas.  The agents were courteous and helpful and within about an hour and a half I was completed and back on the boat.  We lowered the yellow Q flag and raised the Bahamas national flag indicating we had cleared in.


Based on the weather forecast we were going to be here for a couple of days so we had to find some diversion while we were there.

 We went the Dolphin House that should actually be named the Ashley Saunders House.


We watched the sharks swim by the boat.

We made new friends and we went to the beach.

When we arrived at the Bimini marina we came into a mostly empty marina but before the sun fell that night it quickly filled to capacity.  Remember what I said about the ebb and flow of cruisers to the Bahamas.  When the weather is good the folks at the marina leave for other point in the Bahamas and it make room for the next group coming from the US.  See the previous post “The Rhythm of Cruising in Boot Key Harbor”.

The talk on the dock invariably center around when everybody was planning to leave for their next destination.  The talk was about weather, strategy and routes.
As I write this I am setting in Nassau so we obviously left Bimini but The Dolphin House and the next leg of the trip are for future post on this blog.