SAIL Bahamas

This week long excursion that was a bare boat adventure was in 1978 so I have no photos.  The MO was this.  I left Baltimore with my cousin Ed Spilman on his private plane and we flew to Miami where we rented a 43 foot Irwin with Air con.  Wow it was nice.  nice galley, nice berths, sleek boat and it was in the summer so we had strong tropical breezes.

Ed and I had 3 other friends: John Fetser, Paul Pratt (now dead) and and I can not remember the other guy. I took diving tanks for everyone but only Ed and I dived.  We left Miami Key Biscane and headed directly to Cat key (next to Bimini) to clear customs.  We were carrying 2 pistols to thart off any priating- I love guns and seek out those battles.  As soon as we got into the ocean we hit a tropical strom.  Many of those on board were scared with the 14 foot wavers but I was in heaven.  I love the storms and battles.

After clearing Bahamian customs we traveled through the night to Andros island.  Wow I almost sank the boat on a shallow reef.  What happened our boat could nto handle the wind from the wind speed so we motored and that broke down so we headed in to fix the engine and I almost hit the reef bummer.

Ok I dove here and shot some lobster before heading otu for NAssua.  After arriving in NAssua we landed at the (I think) holiday inn beach resort and met some fine ladies and wined and dined all night long.  IT was fun before heading out to less inhabited islands.

I think we got to Harbour island and every day I dove for fish and lobster it was great fun.  One day I gave all of this fish to the guys and told them not to clean the fish before I came back.  I used an Hawaiian sling.  Well when I surfaced one time they were cleaning the fish and throughing the parts in the water.  SO I headed home fearful of sharks and Cuda.  Well the water was alive with cuda like 70 of them.  I was lucky to make it out.

So we headed home and I had a girl friend ( Nancy Davis) fly to Bimini on Chalk Airlines where we picked her up.  We all went swimming in the pool and met some (women) that were partying with Judges and the trucking lobbying for higher rates.  The (women were very attractive but professional ). I hope the group got their higher rates.

Ok so I almost killed Nancy diving.  We were down about 150 feet and got caught in a rip that took us away from the boat and a storm came in and they guys were partying like rock stars.  So we were carried away but we were finally rescued after about 2 hours.  IT could have gone badly.

We arrived back in Miami and went through customs and all went well. sorry about no  pictures. Here are some recent dive pictures