We had a free day today to do whatever we wanted to do! We sailed to the Sapona and dive around and in it. We also climbed up on the ship and jumped off. It was simply amazing.
While the kids were enjoying the Sapona, Dan was trying to talk to people at SSC. Back in Bay St. Louis, the school was in a near panic with no internet. Cell service is not that great around Bimini and Dan found it difficult to communicate with people back home. Karen came to the rescue signing him up for the international calling and texting plan. That helped, but it would turn out to be an arduous task troubleshooting from 1000 miles away. It turned out that the internet provider did an upgrade which left us hanging.
That didn’t dampen the activities though, and after the Sapona, Big Easy II, headed southwest to Honeymoon Harbor where our crew visited the stingrays. After that, we headed back to Bimini for more Junkanoo!
Dan and Tyler played music onstage for Junkanoo and later, Tyler entered and won the watermelon eating contest. He is now the reigning 2016 Junkanoo Watermelon Eating Champion and has the medal to prove it!
Today was the last day of band camp, culminating in a Mardi Gras style parade through the streets of Bimini! We brought a huge wagon-load of beads and other things for the younger children to throw to the crowd. The parade was a huge success – the band played 5 different songs and the drummers kept the beat the whole time, showing off 5 cadences themselves.
We delivered all the children’s books to the Ministry of Tourism to be presented to the school system in August! Thank you to everyone that donated! They really appreciated it! On our way back to the boat we stopped at the Public Library and noticed it in complete disarray! All the crew stepped right up to the challenge and within 15 minutes had completely overhauled the shelves!
We just arrived into dock from a great snorkeling place called Three Sisters near the north end of the island! We sailed all the way there with no help from our motors! Everyone needed that smooth sail after having such a rough way here! Beckah and Tyler were spear fishing the entire time and were both pretty good at it! We are gonna be eating well tonight!
Today our good friends, the Govatos/Willis/Nell families, joined us and helped us run the band camp. We’ve now had 2 days of band camp with approximately 50 Bahamian kids playing trumpets, trombones, saxophones, clarinets, and recorders. They are simply amazing. At the end of day 2, we had two songs ready to go for the parade on Friday.
This morning we cleared customs and headed to band camp by pickup truck. We were very glad to be on land and very glad to see our young musicians at band camp. We started the morning with some tuna and grits for breakfast. Then we distributed instruments to all the kids and began teaching them. Tyler and Zach taught the saxes and clarinets; Dan taught the trumpets; Matthew taught the trombones; Danielle, Taylor, and Beckah taught the recorders. We held off on the drums this first day to give everyone a chance to try out the horns. Everyone got off to a very good start musically.
We are all safe and secure in Bimini. We are moored at Weech’s Dock, owned by our friend, Hank Weech. The crossing was a bit rough with the wind on our nose the whole way. We said “hello and safe journey”, via VHF radio, to the Norwegian Getaway cruise ship. We were close enough for their cell service to connect to my phone and deliver a text. We dodged a couple of smaller ships near Bimini. We’ve just straightened the boat up in case anyone we know shows up in the morning. So, tomorrow–band camp!
After a great night at 
Letting everyone sleep in this morning, after a fun filled movie night! Dan decided that breakfast on the road sounded good! We are on our way to Key Largo!
