Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Any Author name on the Island? - Amazon has 3 different ones.

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Steve, Don't forget to also warn them about the pink sharks. They can be real bad this time of year. I've got the scars to prove it. CanDo

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Benchley

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Heres' another way to go to Bahama's--The Bahama's Boating Fling. Here is a link to one of thier sites --

http://www.bahamas.com/bahamas/event...=97477&level=2

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

If the pirates don't get ya, the Kalik will :D :D :D

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

I had a few Kaliks on my trip.... :drink: :drink:

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Here's something for those scurvy dogs. BOO YAAAA!!!!

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

And a bit more firepower for those of you with superiority complexes (did I spell that right?) :evilb: :evilb:

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

more :evilb:

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

more :blaster: :blaster: :blaster: BOO YAAAA!!!!

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Here's a picture of the boat I came in on the last time I went to the carribean..........we had no pirate problems. :D

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Thanks

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Not true..

The biggest steel parts are the barrel & bolt. Both the upper & lower reciever are made of aluminum. It still requires proper oil & lube to keep it pristine, but a good coat should hold you for a trip.

Marines, SEAL's, etc. all use them in salt water & keep them immersed in salt water at times during swims, etc. With a little maintenance they will do fine. On the flip side, all because a weapon is stainless, doesn't mean it won't rust either.

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Great place to go boating on the FPC poker run.

Do not be scared if you see 1 -2's in the morning and 4 - 6's in on the way home.

What a feeling showing up in the Bahamas in a Top Gun and making in back home to Miami in a Cig.

Enjoy the journey!

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

I thought Pirates were only in my childhood story book... Are you guys serious about all that ? I only read page 1 and just can't beleive what I read. By safe, I thought it was shallow water, rocks whatever else physical, not human wise...

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Jeff32, I am wondering the same thing.

Now I gotta go watch Johnny Deeps new movie..what is it...oh yeah....Pirates of the Carribean :D

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Erase the Johnny Depp image with the eye patch and parrot on his shoulder and replace it with 3-4 Bahamians in a ratty skiff with gold teeth, guns and dreadlocks!

Not that they would all look like that but now you can put a face/image with a Bahamian pirate

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Overall the Bahamas are pretty safe. Not only do you have alot of boat traffic going thru the major destinations such as Freeport, Bimini, Abaco, Paradise Island, et., there is still alot of drug/ immigrant surveillance done everyday by the DEA/ US Coast Guard/ Homeland Security. I go to alot of out of the way islands there to dive and almost daily we see a helicopter or jet flying over us just checking stuff out.

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

How safe is Gand Harbor and Eluthera?

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Took a 22 foot Sea Cat over to Cay Sal Bank last year to do some diving with 4 of my friends last year.For the people who don.t know where this is it is a chain of very small rocky unihabited Bahamian islands about 20 miles off Cuba,and you are supposed to check into customs first in Bimini but that would make it into a 300 mile round trip instead of a 130 mile round trip from Marathon.Well when we showed up there was 15 Cubans waving at us from this rocky island and figuring they were stranded there we cautiously came upto the island with spearguns at ready and threw them some water and an old fishpole and tackle that we had so they wouldn't die out there and they gave us a jar full of phone numbers to call friends in the states.So we get ready to dive and a u.s. coast guard cutter appears on the other side of the island and drops a tender with two coasties with guns and a Bahamian official onboard and boards us.Coasties wanted to be sure we were not there to assist the cubans or pick theem up and told us between us and them the coasties sunk the Cubans boat and put them on the island with the alternative of die or get on the cutter for a ride back to Cuba.The Bahamian official told us we were supposed to check in and out of Bimini and we told him we didn't have enough gas for that run and they let us go.Dove for 5 hours and when we went to leave the cutter chased us for ten miles before catching us and when they caught us they just gave us the once over again and let us go.

Sorry for the grammar and structure.

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

Let's here some more stories ,I love the Bahamas .

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

I remember Brownie saying he delivered a few Donzi's back in the day to the Bahamas,any chance we could here a story or two.

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

I stayed many of weekends out north east of bimini in the rocky heads. I would mate on my friends 34 Venture and we would sleep on the boat most of the weekend. Looking back I think its crazy. I was usually the first one to pass out which means I was the first one to wake up in the am to black clouds, nasty storms off in the distance and the rocky heads is like 30 miles from N bimini, like 20 miles from Great Isac. There would be times while we were in transit and we would notice a boat approaching towards our direction of travel and we would put another 30 degrees and a few more knots. He has been going alot lately, no stories but he packs a small heater. even a shot from a lil 38 will let some monkeys know u krazy.

Im finally the captain, ill be making some trips over there. Ill have alot more speed on my side vs the venture but you should always have something in case....

One of the crew and I would always try to get the captain to go to Bimini for the night to sleep. I hate getting stuck on a center console w/no cuddy all weekend, so Big Game Club on Bimini was a blessing. Grouper, Egg and cheese sandwhices at Capt Bobs are awesome but it takes long. They are in no rush over there. Im not super crazy about Bimini, now that I have a pretty boat, I want to go were there is more action. Casinos are a plus.

I bet I would take traveling to and being on Bahamas more seriously but I have always gotten so trashed that I dont remember all the stuff I should.

I do remember, only because I have a picure, that I put my underwear like a flag atop the boat on our way out. That case of Kalik for the ride home came in handy.

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

i just signed up tonight to check out your forum, and these stories are great

makes me want to take a trip down there now, keep the stories commin

Re: How safe is The Bahamas?
 

HEY!!!!!!! Enough already.... Quit knocking good beer! :D :D :D

So who went this year to the Bahamas? How was it?

We are planing on making Stu's Poker Run for 08:ernaehrung004:

LMAO:D

Awesome Thread!

I am envious!

I can't even imagine living near the Ocean and having all these interesting places to go and things to do. We do have the Mississippi River though, and that's more interesting than any one of the Ten Thousand Lakes!

Great stories! Keep 'em coming!!!

Just start down the Mississippi and when you get to a large body of water that resembles a VERY large lake (Gulf of Mexico) you just head in any direction (preferably southeast) and all those KOOL destinations in the world are just off you nose.:D

My experience in the Exumas is that You can't go anywhere without a DEA chopper overhead. Haven't heard any pirate stories in those parts since Pirates of the Carribean stopped shooting.

Maybe US Gov can send us some free picks, since we allready paid for them:D

I always wondered what happened with that

What happened to Jim Trindade?
By Mark Schwed

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Six months ago today, Jim Trindade vanished at sea while returning home from the Bahamas.

He hasn't been seen since.
And yet he is everywhere.

Calls to his Boynton Beach home are greeted by his deep, cheery voice on the answering machine.

"Hi. You've reached the home of Jim, Candace and Taylor. We're not available to take your call right now. Please leave a message. One of us will get back to you as soon as possible. Have a great day."

On the Web, at www.jimmytlives.com, he swings a golf club, hoists a freshly caught dolphin, rests his cheek against the head of his daughter Taylor, 14.

Even the state of Florida considers him alive and well. It has not issued a death certificate that will allow Candace, his wife of 16 years, to move on.

And so the mystery that has involved the FBI, the Secret Service, the National Security Agency, President Bush, Air Force One, forensics experts and private eyes continues.

What happened to Jimmy T.?

He was last seen on the afternoon of Thursday, Jan. 12, leading a caravan of three boats from Spanish Cay in the Bahamas, where his family and dozens of friends had gathered for the holidays. Trindade was skippering a new 38-foot Donzi with three powerful outboard engines bought by his friend Roger Gamblin after it was used in the upcoming movie Miami Vice. Trailing Trindade were Gamblin's son, Chris, 24, in a 35-foot Donzi, and Chris' friend, Brian Pratts, 23, in a 22-foot Angler. Roger Gamblin was still at Spanish Cay with about eight others.

About 50 miles from home, at 2:19 p.m., Pratts' boat experienced mechanical trouble. He couldn't reach Gamblin on the radio, but he did hail Trindade.

"I'll slow down," the 54-year-old Trindade told Pratt. "I'll idle along and wait for you."

Trindade's boat was out of sight, thought to be 5 miles ahead of the other two boaters.

Twenty-nine minutes after Pratts' radio contact with Trindade, the radio crackled again: "U.S. Coast Guard. U.S. Coast Guard." Pratts and Gamblin say it was Jimmy's voice.

Later, other boaters taking part in a regatta reported hearing a man radio: "Mayday. Mayday. Mayday" — the international distress signal.

Pratts and Gamblin alerted the Coast Guard that their friend was missing, and it immediately launched a massive search involving a jet, helicopters and boats. West Palm Beach police scoured the coastline from Lantana to Palm Beach Yacht Club. Roger Gamblin hired two private planes to join the search, but they couldn't take off for hours because President Bush was visiting West Palm Beach that day, and all flights were grounded until Air Force One left the area.

Finally, at 1:09 a.m. — almost 11 hours after Trindade's radio call to Pratts — a Coast Guard HU-25 Falcon jet spotted the Donzi, two of three engines idling, boat spinning in a circle, no one on board. It was about 38 miles off the St. Lucie County coast.

There are many theories.

Was he ejected after hitting a floating log or a turtle while running his boat at 50 mph? Did he have a heart attack? Did drug-runners or pirates commandeer his vessel? Or did he carry out an elaborate ruse to run away from what everyone else believes was a beautiful life?

After six months, the mystery has only deepened.

"No doubt in my mind the boat was hijacked," says Roger Gamblin, 58, president of Flagler Title Co., a business with eight offices and 80 employees. He met Trindade at a real-estate event in 1976, and the two became fast friends — boating, fishing and vacationing together ever since.

Gamblin, haunted by nightmares, unable to let go, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a private hunt for answers. He has hired private eyes, and filed Freedom of Information requests with the Secret Service and National Security Agency, sure that they must have secret satellite images of the area because of Bush's visit. The agencies have not turned anything over.

He says he has pored over charts, analyzed infrared images taken by the Coast Guard and reported all his findings to the FBI.

"I just met with them last month," Gamblin says. "They're still investigating. They, as far as I know, don't have anything exciting in the way of leads. They're very polite about not telling us anything."

At first, the FBI was skeptical, Gamblin says.

"There were accusations," he recalls. "They asked questions like, 'Why do you have fast boats?' It took them a week to get to foul play. Now the FBI strongly believes he is the victim of homicide."

The FBI did not return phone calls for this story.

There are clues, most developed by Gamblin, all laid out neatly on www.helpjimmy.org, a Web site devoted to the mystery. Two coolers loaded with expensive beef and seafood — surplus from the vacation trip — are missing. Two new GPS systems aboard the boat had been tampered with, Gamblin says. And, most curious of all, some 200 gallons of fuel are unaccounted for. It's a simple mathematical equation. Trindade had filled up his 320-gallon tank before departing the Bahamas. He had gone about 120 miles. Gamblin contacted the engine manufacturer to find out that three engines burn about one gallon per mile. The gas tank was virtually empty when it was found by the Coast Guard. What happened to the other 200 gallons?

"Someone was on that boat," Gamblin says. "Someone ran that boat at high speed for six hours. That's not idling. There was no accident. There cannot have been an accident."

There is new information that seems to back up Gamblin's conclusion. About 40 minutes after Trindade's last known radio call, a boat similar to his was spotted moving at top speed 15 miles to the south of his last known position, directly toward a cruise ship, Royal Caribbean's Sovereign of the Seas. Last month, Gamblin, his wife, Peggy, and two friends booked a cabin right next to the cruise ship's bridge so they could interview the crew about the sighting. He says he recorded the interviews on video.

"They were extremely cooperative," he says. They showed him the log entry. At 3 p.m., a fast boat was spotted racing directly toward the cruise ship. Then, for 10 minutes, it moved parallel to it before speeding off toward Freeport at 3:10 p.m. "There's no question that the boat was the 38-foot Donzi," Gamblin says. "There were identifying marks," he says, including the black and white colors and the word "Donzi" printed under the T-top on the dry box.

But even with binoculars, the cruise ship crew could not identify the person at the wheel of the boat.

Gamblin's theory is that the hijackers entered a GPS plot at the spot where they commandeered the boat, then sped to meet another vessel that did not have GPS. The hijackers used the cruise ship as a navigational tool. Something like, "Head toward the big ship."

After they met up, they went to Freeport, then returned the vessel to the GPS waypoint they entered, near where it was hijacked to make it look like a boating accident and not piracy.

Gamblin has no idea why they needed the boat. Run some drugs. Smuggle some people. Fetch contraband. All he wants to know is what happened to Trindade.

"It bothers me every day," Gamblin says. "I'm still dreaming about it."

Trindade's wife, Candace, did not return a phone call for this story. That's not surprising, Gamblin says. Even her friends have trouble getting hold of her at times, he says.

It's tragic enough that her husband, the father of her daughter, is gone, but she has had to hire Boca Raton lawyer Ron Rosenwasser to try to get the state to declare him dead, so she can continue with the business of life.

Because everything was in her husband's name, Gamblin says, she is financially paralyzed. She can't sell her home, can't access bank accounts, can't operate his real-estate business, can't move on.

Gamblin says courts are "a little gun-shy" to declare missing people dead. "Over the past 15 or 20 years, there have been other disappearances. Some of them happen to be in the drug-smuggling business. In cases where the person is declared legally dead, they were later found alive and just hiding," Gamblin says.

He says attorneys believe it may take years until the courts declare Trindade dead.

Florida law states that "a person who is absent from the place of his or her last known domicile for a continuous period of five years and whose absence is not satisfactorily explained after diligent search and inquiry is presumed to be dead."

Friends of the Trindades have rallied to Candace and Taylor's aid, holding a golf tournament May 7 at the Atlantis Country Club that raised about $50,000 for Taylor's education.

But both mother and daughter are suffering.

"They have good days and bad days," says Gamblin.

Gamblin, too, is having trouble.

At first, he would wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about his friend floating in the dark, alone.

"You try to do things to move on with your life, to not think about it. It's impossible," he says. "Every time I walk by a fish on the wall, or see a golf club, or eat fish, just anything, see the ocean, Jimmy flashes through my mind. I've come to the conclusion I'm not going to be able to hide from it or run from it. I just know it's going to run through my life."

So he has put up a big picture of Jimmy on his living room wall. "It was taken at one of our parties, probably in the Bahamas," says Gamblin. It shares space with the dozen or so big fish the two caught together. And there's the giant lobster that Jimmy caught and had mounted just for his buddy Roger.

Outside, in the back yard of Gamblin's 3-acre property near Wellington, there is a new tribute to his friend.

Gamblin wanted to plant a tree. But the project grew into a massive monument to friendship — a gurgling teak and granite fountain with palm trees and brightly colored exotic plants.

"I call it Mount Gay Falls," he says. "Jimmy's favorite drink was Mount Gay Rum and Coke."

On Aug. 1, Gamblin and a host of Trindade's friends will do something they haven't done since the disappearance — return to their favorite party spot in the Bahamas.

"We just kept thinking, 'What would Jimmy want?' Jimmy would certainly want us to continue. I made




Interesting twist to this old story.......

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_1...in;contentBody

Jim Trindade was never found.....

Roger Gamblin and his wife fled the area, leaving their title company a few million short.

Roger and wife hid out in Colorado under assumed names working minimum wage jobs until Roger was hospitalized with heart issues. His pacemaker gave away his true identity.

Roger and wife were arrested for the fraud/fleeing related to his title company. Roger died in the last couple months from his heart issues. Wife is set to stand trial and is currently incarcerated.

So I guess we will never know if he had anything to do with his "best friends" death. The whole story sounded fishy to me. I mean what kind of thief brings the boat back to the same spot it was originally taken from. There is no way a hijacker brings the boat back to the same spot, no way!!!! Who wants to stay on a stolen boat to bring it back to where in was last taken, just more time to get caught!

What about the 3rd boat? Was in not in between the Donzi and the 22 footer?

If it was a 29 Fountain........ :party-smiley-004:

A buddy of mine, was attacked in St Martin a couple of months ago, Hes as street smart as they come, hes been back and forth between Miami and the islands many times, He was almost killed, and would have been, had he not been trained his entire life, by his dad and brothers who are police officers. They tricked him by using a fake cab, took him out to the middle of nowhere, and demanded his money etc, he gave it up, and tryed to get away, but they attacked him, bats , luckily no guns, he held them off for quite a while and went for the water, he was treading water for about an hour or two, before it got dark enough for him to swim out of sight, he is very lucky to be alive, and he was beat up real bad when he got home, just yesterday, they called him to interview him about the people that attacked him, turns out the same guys killed 4 people and raped 2, before they were caught a week ago.

Wtf! I had a friend of mine killed at Mullet Bay last year. Never solved.

I am saddened and sorry to hear of people being beaten and killed in places that I have recently visited. Tragic. I spent several days in St Maarten / Saint Martin and visited several other islands and never once felt unsafe or even uncomfortable. Day or night. I will be going back and I hope no one is deterred by these events. These situations can and do happen in the cities we live in as well. Be safe.
Bob