It was an early afternoon at the Bimini Big Game Club Resort & Marina in the Bahamas, and it seemed like, all at once, the entire island went on siesta.
Nary a soul walked the marina’s docks. The fishermen who had been filleting their morning catch had vanished. Gone were the incessant cries of the bickering gulls. The only sound was the palm fronds blowing in the building breeze and the snapping of flags. Occasionally, the wind brought in the deep, percussive bottom end of a reggae tune.
I sat in a woven, aluminum-framed lawn chair in the shade, occasionally reading the book I had brought along, but mostly daydreaming. All morning, this had been the ideal perch to watch a seemingly never-ending parade of boats cruise past the marina—mostly day-trippers and anglers, but also more than a few flybridge models loaded with spring breakers bound for day-drinking in a calm anchorage.
With no more boat traffic flowing past the marina, I figured our trip back to the mainland would be delayed, but there was no one around to ask. Windy conditions were upon us, and the Gulf Stream would be stacked with wind-against-current ugliness.
Just two days earlier, on our way to the Bahamas, we had turned around just a few miles from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in a howling north wind, smartly avoiding the big, square waves that would have greeted us as we crossed the Gulf Stream. The next day, we blasted over when the cold front had passed.
I had made the trip from the mainland to Bimini several times over the years and found that I’m never fully prepared for how exotic the isles feel compared to South Florida. The crystalline water goes from Windex clear—where one can pick out spotted eagle rays, barracuda and turtles puttering about 20 feet or so below the keel—to deep sapphire as the bottom falls out. After what is usually a quick customs check-in, you’re on island time.
I’m hesitant to plan anything instead of going with the flow. I’m not an angler by any means, but I’ve been on the flats before, trying to cast a fly at a bonefish that I cannot see, but the guide insists is 30 feet off our port quarter. Day-drinking is not my thing, but I can’t resist an ice-cold Kalik after swimming in a calm anchorage with my feet dangling in the water.
This last time I was here, I jumped into a golf cart with my traveling companions after morning coffee and motored past the conch shell mounds and vibrantly painted buildings of Alice Town and Bailey Town to Resorts World Bimini, the neat-as-a-pin property that dominates the north end of the island. The frozen drinks looked inviting, but the blasting house music and packed beach of inebriated college kids did not.
We had other ideas and headed back for a day on the water. We swam off North Cat Cay and, later, dropped the hook near the wreck of the SS Sapona for lunch. That evening, as the full moon rose from the sea and shone like a spoon, we enjoyed an evening beverage on the Big Game Club’s deck among the resort’s assorted guests.
Now that’s island time.
