#Kiteboard Rental in Nassau

[thomasandlaraaroundtheworld]

Located just 80 km off Florida’s coast, Bimini is the closest Bahamian island to the United States. Known as Ernest Hemingway’s favorite escape, Bimini is apparently historically significant. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. composed parts of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech while sailing with a local boat builder. Bimini consists of two main islands—North Bimini Island and South Bimini Island—and numerous cays. Bimini is known as the “Big Game Fishing Capital of the World.” Apparently the largest ever caught in the Bahamas – a close to 500 kg Blue Marlin – was reeled in there in 1979. Bimini has emerged as one of the best places on the planet to encounter one of the ocean’s most amazing predators, the Great Hammerhead Shark. These elusive giants have evaded divers for years, but now Neal Watson’s Bimini Scuba Center, the first and only dive center on the island, has access! And exactly for these magnificent creatures is why we are here!

After a short overlay in Nassau we arrived on South Bimini around 5pm. A car and ferry ride later, at about 5.45 pm, we approached the dock of the “Big Game Resort” on North- Bimini where we already saw Luca waiting for us! Although it has only been a couple of weeks we were thrilled to see him and embrace him into our arms! 

On the 27th of February we checked out the island and our entertainment options. The only two set-in-stone appointments we had were the two pre-booked hammerhead dives on 1 and 4 of March. A 1 hour ride in a rental golf buggy clarified quickly for us that kiteboarding here was not going to be easy due to the wind direction and the “wrong” location of the beaches on the island. What was evident quickly was that big game and bone fishing as well as diving were “the things” to do on Bimini. Dining out and shopping options were also down to an absolute minimum. From our first impression we could tell that the island is rather poor and the locals often seem high/ intoxicated.  During the afternoon that day several large fishing boats from the US docked in front of our hotel and we witnessed several that had caught some decent size fish. We went to the fish cleaning station on the dock where a guy called Sammy had started cleaning the fish. He and a guy from North Carolina (NC) even arranged an impressive show for us by feeding the gigantic local Tarpons with the trash of the caught fish. We learned that there are usually many bull sharks that come into the bay for such a feast but that due to a recent illegal killing by the locals of one such shark they had vanished and have not been seen for 2 weeks! As we were hanging out at the dock for quite a while we ended up getting really lucky: the NC fisher offered us three enormous stakes of his freshly caught Wahoo which we then had grilled by our resorts’ restaurant for dinner. Yummy!

On the 28th good winds were forecasted. We took the for free accessible bikes of our hotel and rode up to the north tip of North-Bimini. Since Luu’s bike only had one gear and a too loose chain we occasionally had to stop for a quick bike repair and to put the fallen-out chain back into its proper place. Our observation of the wind and beach led to the conclusion that we would give it a shot. After organizing some back-up security due to the wind being off shore we rented a golf buggy and hauled our kite stuff to the 2km distant located beach. We certainly were the center of attention up there. Thomas and I tried to go out on the 14 square meter but neither of us was really successful as the wind was too little and gusty. For the photo album we still managed to take some breathtaking shots as the color of the ocean here too is simply amazing.