Bimini Islands Bahamas

View from the entrance to the very pink Administration Complex in Alice Town where North Bimini’s immigration office is located

Having anchored off the beach on the Florida Straits (west) side of North Bimini on Saturday 16 March, we launched the dinghy and, armed with the ship’s paperwork, headed ashore to find customs and immigration.  The offices have moved since our cruising guide was written and it took us a short while to locate customs (now in the Big Game Marina complex); immigration is in the bright pink Administration complex a little further up the road.  Happily, since Bimini is such a popular place to check into the Bahamas, both customs and immigration are open, and there is no overtime charge, on Saturdays.  Whilst waiting in line behind an American checking in who had declared that he had weapons on board (why?), Nicky was shocked to read a sign saying that you may import up to 3 weapons and quite a vast amount of ammunition, something in the region of 250 rounds in total, into the Bahamas.  I’m not sure what they expect visitors to be shooting; perhaps they have some great clay pigeon ranges!

Alice Town views.  Top: the marina at which we would have stayed had we not found that we could
clear in whilst anchored off.  Bottom: the pontoon belonging to the town’s dive shop.  Note all the
pelicans – they are more common here than seagulls

Whilst Nicky was waiting in the queue at customs, I went to check out the local dive shop.  Yes, they would fill our tanks but they were less helpful in discussing local dive sites – apparently all the details are online. All the signs around the marina (The Big Game Marina) proclaimed Bimini to be the big game fishing capital of the world.  Funny that, that’s what Key West claimed too.  Perhaps it’s all to do with whether or not Hemingway visited (tick for both).

The channel past Alice Town up to the new casino and hotel complex.  Bottom: great idea for sundowners – standing in the warm, shallow waters of a Bahamian shoal

The Alice Town marinas with beautiful clear waters

The west coast beach off which we and a couple of
other yachts were anchored

With all the formalities complete, we took a wander around Alice Town.  The town was very quiet, perhaps because it was a Saturday afternoon, perhaps because March is still low season in the Bahamas.

BV at anchor off the beach bar

Not that the people on the beach, like us, seemed put off by the fact that it was still, technically, low season. Indeed, it was a beautiful day and lovely and warm and we needed to come up with a plan for diving the following morning before heading off to find a suitable place to sit out the forecast spell of poor weather.

However, irritatingly, when we got back to BV we found that our BTC (Bahamas Telephone Company) sim card was no longer operating properly.  We could make telephone calls but could not use the data credit.  So much for lasting for 3 months without use as we had been told in Great Inagua!  In the end we manged to get internet access through the beach bar and, after quite some time on Google, found a number of Bimini dive site reviews and, more importantly, details of the sites’ locations.  Armed with this information, and a late afternoon recce in the dinghy, we came up with a plan for the following day.

Diving on ‘The Kinks’

We made an early start the following morning and by 0940 we were in the water diving on ‘The Kinks’.  This site comprises number of large coral heads in about 16m, interspersed with patches of white sand.  It’s not a huge site but that meant that we could go round it a couple of times.

Left:  Barrel sponge and French angelfish.  Right: Square fire coral, Grey angelfish and Bluestriped grunts

The water was beautifully clear and we saw a profusion of fish, including the largest French and Grey angelfish we had seen to date, plus lots of healthy-looking coral and sponges.

Huge shoals of Grunts.  Right: Cottonwick (pale with black backs and tails), French grunts (the yellower fish) and White grunts (the pale fish without the black trim)

The first dive lasted 45min and after a short stop on BV to change tanks and have a coffee, we headed off to the slightly shallower dive site ‘The Ship’ or ‘Lime Reef’.  This site is one, moderately sized reef approximately in the shape of a ship and, like at the first dive site, we saw huge numbers of fish and coral.

Top left: Squirrelfish (left) and Ocean surgeonfish (right) on the horizon with Barrel and Tube sponges. Top right: Crazy hair!  Bottom left: Lionfish.  Bottom right: Squirrelfish

At the depths we were diving, much of the colour is washed out of the photos and everything seems very blue and yellow.  There’s a bit more colour in real life and more again if you use a torch.

Left: Blue parrotfish with Porkfish (black and white striped head) and French grunts

Also, the pictures don’t capture the multitude of very small fish, some juveniles, some just small, that hang around good-sized coral outcrops.  A few of these pictures show wrasse and the like but in reality we saw hundreds of wrasse, damselfish, hamlets, basslets and gobies.

Even allowing for the magnifying effect of viewing through a mask, it was a huge French angelfish (with female Blueheaded wrasse back left)

Porkfish, French grunts, Brain coral and Corky seafingers

They were a great couple of dives, the more so because we felt as if we were grabbing a short opportunity to do them, and we were.

Returning from the dive shop with full tanks again

As soon as we had surfaced and changed, I zipped away from BV with the air tanks and had them refilled whilst Nicky got on with rinsing and cleaning all our kit.  I was only gone half an hour (what a great service from the dive shop) but by the time I returned everything was clean and drying and all we really had to do was strap the tanks back in place to ready BV for sea.

Mobile drying shop

By 1430 we had started the engine and were preparing to raise the anchor.  With a cold front on the way we wanted to get settled in a location sheltered from almost every direction, difficult to find in the Bahamas but necessary as the wind clocks around most of the compass as the cold front goes through and this cold front was forecast to be pretty active.  Spanish Wells looked to be a good bet and had the benefit of being only about 30nm east of Nassau so if the poor weather lasted longer than expected we were still likely to be able to get to Nassau in time to meet Nici and Neil on Monday 25 March.  To get there though, we needed to cover 160nm and we wanted to arrive in daylight so that we could see the coral heads in the shallows and before the bad weather arrived. To achieve all that meant leaving in that afternoon for an overnight passage and, with little to no wind forecast for the next 24-36hrs, we were going to have to motor.  So, after just 25hrs in Bimini but with some great fun diving achieved, we headed off to Spanish Wells on Eleuthera.

Bimini Islands, Bahamas