Florida Powerboat Club

SUMMER BAHAMAS SERIES

I can't help but remember one very entertaining evening at a club member's home, before heading across the Gulfstream to Grand Bahama Island. We had just wrapped up a captains meeting at the Portside Marriott, the boats were fueled and ready to go, and the night was still relatively young. It was early August, and we were locked-and-loaded for the last in our series of three Bahamas events that were scheduled through the summer months.The weather was iffy, but we had our fingers crossed for a smooth ride from Fort Lauderdale to Old Bahama Bay, the new marine resort at West End, just 74 miles from Port Everglades. In the Captains meeting, many topics were covered, but as always, the most overwhelming issue was big seas and bad weather. And rightfully so. Just three weeks prior, a carefully planned trip to Atlantis on Paradise Island had to be scrubbed….at least the boating part of it, because Mother Nature was having a bad month, and her fury caused lots of rain and nasty seas. So we did the right thing…we parked the boats and flew. And that's no big deal really, but with so much planning and all the anxiety that builds up within us, especially the members who are doing the trip for their very first time…it's just plain disappointing to not see the adventure through. So for those who need to be reminded, we managed to pull off two of our three scheduled Bahamas trips in 2001. We got to Bimini and Port Lucaya in June, we scratched the July trip to Atlantis because the weather crapped out, and by early August, our last-ditch effort, we managed to get to Port Lucaya with relative ease,…but getting FROM Port Lucaya home was a real ball-buster. We could easily have renamed the event from the Grand Bahama Rally, to the Grand Bahama Rodeo, because most of us felt like we were riding wild broncos five minutes into the trip, so he laid over at Our Lucaya another night. The next day, we put on our thinking caps and came up with a crossing-strategy, while waiting out the strong winds at Old Bahama Bay, and our revised heading to ride the rhythm of the troughs rather than face a strong head-sea proved to be the answer to getting everyone home safely.

Now if you saw the Summer 2000 Bahamas coverage from our last newsletter, which raved about unbelievably calm conditions on our trip to Atlantis…you'll start to get the picture. Same destination. Same time of year…Just a totally different experience!

So….about that little get together at the member's home. It was Mike Ellis' very cool bachelor pad off Las Olas, with all the creature comforts one could ever ask for. Mike's in the business of high-end home entertainment systems, and a bunch of us enjoyed a series of action-movie clips and rock videos in triple-quadra-ultra-mega-surround sound. . But one very intense performance came from a guy we've all come to know as Meatloaf. The song, was Two Outta Three Ain't Bad. The significance of that that experience has newfound meaning for me, and I will leave you with this. If you plan to come to Bahamas next summer…be prepared for those odds. Florida Powerboat Club has adopted a long-standing doctrine about safety and overall boating enjoyment. If it's too rough or if there's a strong likelihood of rain or foul weather….we don't go. Well, at least we leave the boats behind. It's no big deal to jump in a plane and shoot over there anyways, and often that's what we've done. So we don't take the boats…big deal. There will be plenty more chances to do the event in the future. And chances are, we might have fantastic conditions! When that happens, be prepared for some of the best boating you've ever done. So my second message is, don't give up hope! It's really worth the effort to go to the Bahamas, and you'll only find out if you try. In 2002 we have three more summer events scheduled, so start planning now. My advice; plan for one of the earlier ones, so if we have to scratch, you're in position to try again, and you won't have to wait another year.

For information about how to prepare for a Bahamas trip, contact the club office.