We spent our 1st day in Alice Town exploring what the small city had to offer. We found some really cool beaches and met some locals working on cleaning out giant turtle shells and conch shells. They were known as “Uncle Stinky” and “Sucka Bobby”. I think we were the Suckas though. Somehow they swindled us into buying them booze at the liquor store. I don’t really even know how they did it. Oh well. After meeting a few more locals, we found that these two guys were pros. All in all, our 1st day on the island was kinda low key. We were pretty exhausted from our 2 night passage.
The next day we set out in an effort to learn how to spearfish. We bought a Hawaiian sling spear in Key West but had not yet used it. Man was this fun! It’s like hunting and fishing all in one! It takes a lot of patience and a good lung capacity. It’s an excellent workout and we’re still getting the hang of it. We speared a few smaller grunt fish, but nothing really worth eating.
This was also the day we met our new friends Lee, Rick, and Greg. Great guys from the SF Bay area. Lee was in the furniture making business and, come to find out, he had a contract with UND (Andy and I’s alma mater) and told us he probably made all the dorm furniture we had back in McVey hall! Lee had a beautiful Morgan 41 sailboat named “Door #3” after the Jimmy Buffett song. He had just restored it after it was sitting mostly untouched for 9 years in Marathon, FL. He had just sailed it across to Bimini with his two longtime friends. We met Lee just before we started spearfishing. He saw our stuff and asked a couple questions about snorkeling where we were. One thing led to another and we started talking about the whole trip Andy and I were undertaking. I think he was pretty impressed. Later that evening, he invited us over to his vessel for drinks. The 5 of us were living it up, so loudly that another skipper from across the dock came to see what was up. Soon it was a party of 6. Good times were had by all!
The next day, Rick (who is some kind of music producer in California) downloaded, onto one of our external hard drives, all kinds of cool new music for us to rock out to on the voyage to come. Thanks Rick! We’re sifting through the stuff as I type. You got some weird music on here, but we’re really diggin the Brian Eno and Yo La Tengo. Your guy Mike Farrell is pretty cool too.
We spent our final morning in Bimini helping Lee with some boat stuff and getting the music from Rick. Lee and crew were leaving the next day to go back to California (leaving the boat tied up at the marina in Bimini) and they were nice enough to give us all their perishable groceries off the boat. Thanks again guys! After about 48 hrs in Bimini, we set out to explore more of these near islands and what they had to offer. After a quick daysail south on our way to North Cat Cay, we stopped at an exposed shipwreck called “Sapona”. We dropped anchor and headed in via dinghy to check it out. This was my 1st experience snorkeling a shipwreck and it was pretty rad! This shipwreck was actually a boat of ferro-cement construction built by Henry ford in 1911. It was designed as a WWI troop transport and after the war (during prohibition) it was a rumrunning boat between Miami and the Bahamas. It’s rumored this vessel was actually a floating drinking club for the high class folks of the time who wanted to get their booze on. It sank in the height of prohibition a few miles south of Bimini. I guess even the skipper was partaking.
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