Sailing Ohana

We properly re-named the boat, following all the superstitious traditions, hoping that Poseiden would give us a break and once we were properly logged into his all-important record books. We did the de-naming ceremony before the boys went to bed, but because it is bad luck to christen a boat with its new name on a Friday, we had to wait until 1:00am on Saturday to do the naming ceremony. Tommy and I recited all the prayers to the 4 wind gods and to Poseidon, throwing champagne into the water. Once the process was complete, we made the crossing to the Bahamas officially as OHANA. The wind was dead calm, and it was a very boring motor sale. We decided it would be better to just get there than to wait for the perfect winds. There are stories about people who live in the Florida Keys because they are stuck there waiting for a perfect weather window for a sailing to the Bahamas, which never comes.

We checked in at Big Game Marina on Bimini, where it’s very conveniently located near the customs office. Tommy was the only person allowed off the boat until we had been cleared. It was fun to put up our flags to show we were cleared into the Bahamas. We fly the Colorado flag because a big American flag can look kind of “Trumpy”, to quote the boys.

The slip next to us was occupied by a family from Cleveland, on a monohull called Adiona. They have a son and daughter and sailed down the East Coast of the US starting in November. The boys had fun playing with Quinn (the son) and the three of them started begging us to let them jump off the roof of our aft cockpit. Just then, a security guard came over to tell us that there is ABSOLUTELY no swimming or any body parts in the water because the restaurant/bar has bull sharks. The fishermen bring the boats in at the end of the day and throw the scraps to the sharks when they process the fish. We went to check it out in person and were horrified to see several absolutely giant bull sharks swimming in the marina. I could hardly allow the boys to stand anywhere on the dock above, the scene was so terrifying.