Contagion spreads from Florida to Exumas

[Group9]

Originally Posted by CSY Man

Day Trippers?

Before 9-11 and increased Security There was some Day Trippers shooting over from Miami on 26' SeaRays and the like and going back to Florida without checking in, fly The flag, but Don't pay The price.
Easy to Get away with as The Bahamaians did not have fuel for their patrol boats and nobody was checking nothing.
After 9-11 the U.S. Government started pumping money into the Bahamas Border Protection and also kept USCG Cutters
of the Bimini coast in case Al-Queda had evil plans to launch attacks on U.S. big fat targets like cruise ships coming out of Miami or Fort Lauderdale with 5000 pax and crews. More soft targets than 9-11.Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum

Google "Opbat". It's been going on in the Bahamas for over 35 years. The U.S. government has been buying boats for the Bahamas government, and putting fuel in them for along time. When I worked there, the Bahamians had three 46 foot Nor-techs, and a large RIB patrol boat, that were in that category. And, all those Coast Guard Helicopters you see flying around the Bahamas, have Bahamian police in them.

How do I know?

[Sailor_Hutch]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

Same as with the advent of cable and satellite TV and the internet along with bribes in the form of political contributions any idiot can get elected and push his or her interest group driven agenda down everybody's throat.

Back in the nineties you could put a website up, and be guaranteed many visitors, cuz there were not many of them. Then some idiot invented the blog, and there were suddenly billions of pages. Now your sailblog is a lonely place.

A few years ago they were saying that sailors were on their way out. I remember seeing some statistic that showed a decline of seventy five percent since the hay day of the seventies/eighties.

I suppose there's been a resurgence thanx to supply of cheap boats.