Not all of my boat trips to Bimini have been as bad as this one was, thankfully.
So arriving at the dock at around 9 am on a beautiful sunny summer morning, I looked around for this 35-foot cabin cruiser that was to be my home for the next 3 days. I asked Roger, my diving partner on this trip, where was the boat?? Roger said right there in front of you. What I saw resembled the boat in the movie, African Queen. The boat was filthy and that was being kind with my words. I came on board and looked down into the cabin and the stench was overwhelming. I asked Roger what in the hell was that odor…he said the dogs. Apparently, Filthy Phil and Horrible Howard had 4 dogs that lived aboard the boat with them somewhere upriver…well beyond the normal beaten path of civilization, I’m sure.
It was my 16th year that summer when the phone rang at my parent's house. It was Roger, a friend of a friend of a friend. I knew Roger from diving friends and he seemed like a good guy. Roger asked me if I wanted to go spearfishing in Bimini, which is the first of the Bahama Islands about 55 miles off the Miami coast. Never having been there before I said sure what do I need to bring. Roger said a dozen eggs and plenty of diving gear. I said is that all the food I need to bring? That alone should have rung the ole alarm bell, but hey !… I was young and dumb, but a really good spearfisherman. Maybe that was why they wanted me to go along, to be able to bring more fish back home to sell. I asked my parents and said I knew Roger pretty well and indicated what could possibly go wrong on a 35-foot cabin cruiser. OOK!!
So looking around that foul-smelling cabin I asked how many engines does this thing have and Phil said one flathead 6 cylinder…the one with a plywood box over it right in the middle of the cabin. Well, I immediately knew where I was staying and sleeping on this trip…up on the flying bridge 'wanna-be'. At least it had a top for shade and away from that awful odor. To make matters somewhat discomforting was the fact that both Phil and Howard were busy working on the engine…did I hear that bell ring again??
It was already getting pretty hot, so I decided to don my swim fins and mask and jump into the water next to the dock…the dock with a sign that indicated “No Swimming”. Phil hollered out…why not clean the bottom of the boat while you’re down there. Oh! This is getting real alright, that bottom had not been cleaned in what looked like several years…probably because the motor never ran. So for the next 2 hours, I scrapped the bottom of the “Garbage Scowl”. Finally, the Filthy Boys said they think they fixed the motor, and let's get started crossing the Gulf Stream. I’m really beginning to have second thoughts about this trip.
So now it's after 12 noon and we’re just getting started? The tide was going out the Haulover Inlet and the wind was coming in from offshore. This makes for a very dicey wave action of about 5 foot high swells in the middle of the inlet, which by the way is not where you want to steer any boat. You always go off to one side or the other but I guess neither of these two Captains???? knew much about how to handle a boat in that rough of a sea. This once again was probably because that motor never ran much?? So I was ready to abandon ship should she go under before we ever got started on this trip. Damn bells keep going off !!!
We are now officially on our way... or at least heading east. I think that I may have mentioned something about why we are going so slow?? Phil said that’s all she’s got…” DING”... This is going to be a longggg trip. I guess it was about 4 pm when I heard a loud bang from below me. I was up on the flying bridge where I was stationed for this journey. Something flew past me as it was exiting the roof of the cabin. There was a neat hole about 2 inches in diameter that just missed me about afoot. The motor stopped…I got down from my “Ivory Tower” to see what the hell happened. It turns out that one of the Filthy Boys apparently didn’t tighten the number 4 spark plug well enough, and as it built up cylinder pressure, it loosened the spark plug and it blew right out of the engine and up through the cabin roof, right where I had been sitting. Come-On!.. stop that damn bell from ringing again….this is no longer funny. So I quickly said with great confidence, just put another spark plug in…Phil said I don’t have any spares. OH! Here we go again. Phil said we will just have to continue on and get a plug when we get to Bimini. Now we have heavy exhaust fumes combined with that awful dog smell going on in the cabin. So back up topside where I can at breath get out of the sun…no use burning up before we get there I thought. I fell asleep exhausted from all of the glad tidings of this trip so far…but folks, it’s “NOT OVER”…not by a long shot...read on!.
When I woke up it was dark-thirty already…Boy, I really needed that rest for sure. I looked out to my right side and noticed a white flashing light about 10 miles away. Thinking to myself that was strange. I had looked at the navigational chart just to be familiar with where we were going. I quickly figured out that we were not going where I thought we were supposed to be going. I didn’t want to alarm anyone but I hollered down for Roger to come topside. When he got up there I asked what was that flashing white light off to our right. I think, not sure, but I think he said “OH SHIT” !!!! Howardddddddd, get that map out. I told you it wasn’t over yet. It would appear that we were ever so slightly off course…by 15 miles !!! We were … in effect heading to England…did I hear that bell ring again??? I’m beginning to feel like a well-beaten prizefighter with all of these bells going off.
Let's see if I can set this scene for ya … because if I hadn’t actually experienced this, I probably wouldn’t have believed it myself and you all would think that this was a fictional story. Ya see folks, the Gulf Stream has about a 5 mile per hour northerly current, which you have to compensate for when navigating on this water. The fact that we were only operating on 5 cylinders wide open, we didn’t have enough forward speed to offset the current…so we were going more north than east, not by much, but enough over time. I guess it was a good thing I woke up Huh? We hadn’t noticed until the next morning that one of the Filthy Boys threw a metal wrench up on the dash right next to the compass. I did mention the fact that I didn’t think these two were…. ah … very good captains??? It's a wonder that compass didn’t have us heading back to Miami. You just don't put anything that is metal next to a navigating compass...first order of captainship, which I had already mentioned that these two didn't have. I may have only been 16 years old at the time but I do know a few things about boatsmanship.
We were in an area called the Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Triangle where the mysterious disappearance of a squadron of Navy Pilots known as Flight 19 went missing in December of 1945…I could relate to that, as we were in that same boat…no pun intended here. Soo many planes and boats have slipped away to meet up with Ole Davey, and I was hoping that we were not going to join them.
So Captain Bligh (Filthy Phil) turns the boat south and heads for the lighthouse … the one that marks the north edge of the Bahama Channel that the cruise ships navigate by,... you know the one that leads to England? At this point, I was praying for a cruise ship to come by. We ran until about 4 am passing that lighthouse close off our port side and dropped anchor to wait for sunrise so we could go into Bimini to get spare parts…I was hoping for a new motor or better yet a new boat. Daybreak hit with a loud sound of waves crashing on rocks…folks, you just don’t mistake that sound. I looked out and said thank you, Lord. What I saw was a very large pile of boulders and rocks sticking up out of the water about 20 feet away from the boat. These series of rocks piles make up small islands just a hundred yards offshore. We were anchored between the shore and those rocks. Of course, we never knew they were there….there were no lights on this boat to see them silly... why would I even think that this garbage scow would have lights. So we dodged yet another bullet in the long line of artillery shells on this trip. We very well could have piled up on those rocks and sunk…come to think of it that would not have been so bad after all as things were only going to get much worse… read on and you'll see.
So I jumped into the gin-clear water thinking that it was only 10 feet deep.. it was more like 30 feet. Roger handed me my diving equipment and my CO2 gas spear gun and a couple of free spears (no line attached). I dive down on this nice fat 50lb. Nassau Grouper and fired. The gas bubbles never stopped..the pressure chamber jammed open and ran out all of my bullets (gas)….Yep! that's the end of this gun for this trip. One dive, one grouper for the box. Hey! at least I’m batting a thousand....so far at least.
After eating up all of the eggs on the first morning…no one else brought any eggs and actually not much of anything else to eat either. Roger must have had his wires crossed up on the food supply...go figure! I guess Roger figured we would live off the reef so to speak. It's not like I haven't done that before.
So now we head down to the channel that leads into the Bimini Harbor and the docks. Horrible Howard mentions to Roger for he and I to stay down below in the cabin out of sight. The Filthy Boys failed to mention that Neither Roger nor I were ever listed on the boat’s travel manifest when we left Miami. So now we were official "Stow-Aways” and “The Boys” didn’t want to pay duty on us in Bimini… Now, what a pleasant surprise that was. Let me say this…it really takes a lot to get me mad at anything at that young tender age, but I was getting heated…mutiny had crossed my mind several times over and I think Ole Roger wasn’t too far behind me. If that boat had been more seaworthy I’m sure we would have agreed to toss the Filthy Boys over the side, cut our losses and head home right then and there.
I think the 'Boys' found a rusty old spark plug that they cleaned up to get the motor running, well, better than it was before… which wasn’t saying much, to begin with. We un-docked and headed south away from prying eyes and the head tax collector on our bodies. I spent the next two days using my Hawaiian-Sling-type spear gun, which I preferred anyway. I have killed fish well over 100 lbs with it and was deadly accurate with it. So the fish box was beginning to fill up with Roger and I spearing fish throughout the days and grabbing lobster ( Florida Crayfish for you northerners ) late in the afternoon for dinner. Phil and Howard were as useless as tits on a boar hog when it came to fishing/diving. Actually, I’m not quite sure just what the hell they would have been good at.
On our last night, hopefully, we anchored the boat up on the shallow-water part of the Bahama Bank in about 8 feet of water. Of course, there was only one anchor, so properly anchoring up for swing tides was impossible. Around 2 am I felt a bump in the bottom of the boat…we were hitting the bottom when the tide went out and the water depth was now only 2 feet or less. We tried to start the engine to motor out to deeper water but when the motor was put into forward gear the motor suddenly stopped…this wasn’t good. Roger and I had to get into the water and pull on the anchor rope to get the boat into deeper water for the remainder of the night. When it was light enough to see underwater I went over to see what was stopping the motor when put in gear. Well, Folks, the Gremlins are now swarming. Ya see there is this very heavy thick metal plate that bolts onto the hull to protect the propeller. This plate was about 4 inches wide and about 1 inch thick and was bent up into the propeller after beating against the bottom. This boat is going nowhere unless we can find a way to bend that bar out of the way to clear the propeller. Of course, there is not one single heavy hammer on board this boat. So I took my weight belt which has three four-pound lead weights on it and made a makeshift hammer. I would repeatedly take a deep breath, go under the boat, and pound on that bar to free up the propeller. Roger helped some but it took me a couple of hours with no help from the peanut gallery (Phil and Howard), but I prevailed and we were up and running once again and headed back to the docks at Bimini Harbor and the “Tax Collector”.
Roger and I were once again asked to stay below deck while the Filthy Brothers filed the papers to leave Bimini. Another thought came to mind…If we were not listed on the boat’s manifest leaving the US then that meant that we would not be cleared back into the US and would be considered illegal stow-aways.???? REALLY ??? Of course, Roger and I didn’t stay below deck... we went looking for another ride back to the US. We were in NO WAY going back on that boat. We found a couple that felt sorry for us and our story and they let us aboard their boat. The last report Roger had heard, Phil and Howard broke down again halfway across the Gulf Stream and drifted about 125 miles to the north at Vero Beach, and were picked up by the Coast Guard and towed in.
I’m writing this story some 60 years later and I can vividly remember every minute moment about this trip. The Good Lord was watching over Ole Roger and I…this time. I never found out much more about the Filthy Brothers…I’m sure they sank somewhere in the mangrove islands they called home. I kinda felt sorry for those poor ole dogs though...even though they stank.
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