We have been in George Town, Exuma, for a week now, with strong easterlies blowing to make sailing on the east too uncom- fortable. It's been a good stay, with a big regatta in town, but a bit too much hoopla for our tastes. We've been able to provision at the markets here, water up at the town dock, and are ready to go to Long Island. Stocking Island was a beautiful place to hike up and see the other side in Exuma Sound.


Here is a photo of one of the sailboat races in the regatta that sailed very close to us at anchor; impressive Bahamian sailboats with large sail areas. The crew would hike out on long boards to balance the boats.

We spent three nights at a marina at the northern tip of Exuma Island called Emerald Bay. It's under construction right now, and they have dirt-cheap rates until will be done. Right next door is the plush Four Seasons; you can see how they are marketing all of this at http://www.emeraldbayresort.com/ . It worked out to be a day and a half of working on our anchor locker (we've got a new and distressing leak when we bash into head winds), tearing apart everything in the bow of the boat, and a day of lolling about under an umbrella at a beautiful bay, swimming, and then dipping in the hot tub and steam room. All for 75 cents a foot for dockage.

From there, we sailed down Exuma Sound to George Town, which is the destination for many cruisers in the Bahamas. Up to 400 boats anchor here for the entire winter. Now, at the tail end of the season, there are only 140 boats. It's a good place to hole up and wait for weather for the next crossing over to Long Island. There's a fairly well-stocked grocery store, where we'll load up on fresh food, free water, a cruiser-run library and book swap, and many interesting people to talk to. It looks like we will be leaving here on Friday or Saturday if the strong east winds we've been experiencing for a few days will abate by then. We've also run into a few other late arriving boats who are going south and east also, so we know we'll keep seeing them as we work our way south and east. We hope to be in the Turks and Caicos and the Dominican Republic after that in a couple of weeks.

We have been sailing across the Grand Bahamas Bank, to the tip of the Berry Islands, past Nassau, and down the Exumas chain of islands. It has been a mix of absolutely beautiful weather and windy cold fronts; we saw this sunset anchored between Whale Cay and Little Whale Cay, where the next day we weathered a cold front and winds of 30-35 knots.
You can see our new American flag which is now flying on our stern rail, as we were sailing down the Exumas. We have had some great sailing, with a broad reach down to Great Exuma, as well as days of motoring the whole way, or bashing our way into head winds.

Here is Allan's Cay group of islands, where the iguanas are the only inhabitants on the tiny Leaf Cay in the group. We swam ashore to look at the iguanas and spent a lovely night in this anchorage.

We weathered another, stronger cold front anchored behind Bell Island in the Exumas. Next to us was a boat from Minnesota (a couple from Apple Valley, now living in Punta Gorda, FL), and another boat from Calgary, Canada. Winds of 40 knots blew over the hill and boats in other anchorages dragged, but ours held all night.

Here you see Larry keeping a watch out for shallow water from the mast - our mast steps have come in handy for this. Navigation is a challenge; no handy markers like the Intracoastal Waterway in the U.S. exist here. It's all up to studying your charts carefully, knowing your position, and a careful watch. You can also see our Bahamas courtesy flag flying on our starboard flag halyard in this photo.

We finally made it to the Bahamas! We are now in Bimini, one of the western- most islands in the Bahamas. We had to motor the whole trip over from Miami, as the wind was 10 knots on the nose. It was a long trip, almost 12 hours with our trusty little Yanmar engine, but we made it and anchored close to Bimini. We came in here on Thursday morning and have now been waiting for a good weather window to cross the Bahama Banks to the Berry Islands. We expect to leave Sunday morning at dawn, since the voyage will take two full days.

Bimini has a quaint little town, Alice Town, that has been fun to explore in the meantime. We cleared customs and immigration and are now flying a Bahamas flag on our starboard flag halyard, and our new US flag on the stern rail. It really dresses up the boat to be flying flags. We looking forward to dropping our anchor in this crystal clear turquoise water and being able to jump in and swim around.

Usually I love living as close to nature and its rhythms as we do on the boat. Knowing when the tides are coming in and going out, when sunrise and sunset are, what the phase of the moon is, and what the weather is going to be are all part of our daily life. But sometimes the weather just does not cooperate. It has now been blowing steadily out of the east and north-east for over a week, making it unwise to try a crossing to the Bahamas and making the Gulf Stream into an angry 10-foot sea mess. So we are waiting for the weather to moderate, still in Miami Beach. We're still recovering from illnesses; I have developed what we think is a sinus infection, and Larry still has some tail end of flu symptoms. Hopefully by the time the weather moderates later in the week, we will be well enough to leave.

Both Larry and I now have the flu and are recovering. We have done a bit of exploring in Miami Beach; here is a view of Miami Beach from the neighboring island, close to sunset.


We have found Miami to be an interesting place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live here. There is more emphasis on "looking good" and all sorts of superficial stuff that is hard to get away from. In our typical "cruiser-wear", even dressed up, I feel out of place. We're ready for the islands, as soon as we are healthy enough to work the boat, maybe even by this weekend, March 17. We hope so!

In Miami Beach, we have been fixing a number of necessary things on the boat. Here you see our old fuel pump; Larry replaced the fuel pump with a new one on our diesel engine, which (so far) has finally fixed the last of our fuel drip problems.

We've also found a leak in one of our new polyethylene water tanks. It's been a problem that has been nagging us for a while - just a bit of water in the bilge we haven't been able to locate. We decided to examine the water tanks and found a leak in the tank, and have been dealing with the manufacturer (Seafab in Rhode Island) about a fix. So far it still leaks and we're waiting for some new adhesive to try out next week on it.

We arrived in Miami on Feb. 10, 2007, after a short hop from Vero Beach to Fort Pierce, and then a pleasant overnight motor-sail in good weather from Ft. Pierce to Miami offshore. Unfor- tunately the diesel drip from the fuel line area was still evident on our offshore passage; Larry had to take it apart twice to try to slow it down while we were underway. It's not much but is enough to concern us, and we want to fix it before we leave the US. We have a new fuel pump on order and will install it here in Miami. Also, Debby is sick again, so we're doing maintenance on the boat and resting to recover before we hop over to the Bahamas.

We sailed past some huge cruise ships; Miami is a big port for cruises. We're anchored over by the Venetian Causeway in Miami Beach and are exploring the city with a great bus and rail system. We know we wouldn't want to settle here, but Miami is a pretty nice place to hole up for a week or two.

We have had to slow down to recover from illness. We've been holed up in Vero Beach, Florida, for three weeks now, as Debby recovers from a bout with the flu. It's been pretty warm here, in the 70s and 80s mostly, so it's been a good place to stay put for a while. We hope to go south a bit, and position ourselves in Lake Worth at Palm Beach, FL, to wait for an opportunity to cross over the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. We may get favorable weather to do a crossing as early as Wednesday, Feb. 7. We'll just have to see what the weather does for us!

For the first two weeks of January, we made our way down Florida's Intracoastal Waterway to Vero Beach. We saw the juxta- position of nuclear power plants in the distance with palm trees and the river in northern Florida. We also went through a great deal of "thin water", with a narrow channel dredged out for passage in a two to four foot sound, where this flock of different types of birds were hanging out in central Florida. We're going to stay in Vero for a few days to a week, fixing things and reprovisioning, and then go down to Lake Worth to wait for a good weather window to hop over the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.

We left Southport on the afternoon of December 27, and headed out the Cape Fear River inlet into the north Atlantic. We wanted to get south into some warm weather quickly. On a 60 hour passage, we had good weather for the first 24 hours, motor-sailing, and short, punchy waves for the last part of the time. We made landfall in Fernandina Beach, Florida, at 04:30 a.m. on December 30.

We spent Christmas at the town dock in Southport, NC, along with several of our close friends the pelicans, as you can see here. Southport was a friendly little town, and we met a number of people there. We went to church downtown on Christmas Eve, and saw many decorated boats and houses.

We also weathered a storm the day after Christmas, where we had to tie down the boat with extra lines and help other neighboring boats. We found out later that some gusts of wind were 60 mph!

In Southport, NC, a cormorant dried his wings right next to our spot at the town dock. It has been two warm and beautiful days, almost seventy degrees. We're busy doing a number of things to prepare ourselves and the boat for another offshore adventure. We'll either go down the coast from here, to Charleston, Fernandina Beach, or Ft. Pierce, or if the weather permits, we'll cross the Gulf Stream and make it to the Bahamas. We can almost feel the warm sand, but it will take a while to get there. Merry Christmas to all!

On December 12, we left Oriental, bound for Swansboro. Close to Beaufort, NC, we broke a fan belt and didn't have a spare. We got a tow into Beaufort and lots of help from the local TowBoat / US operator there in locating a new belt. Now we have a spare. It was a new and interesting problem to install the belt, involving taking the alternator mostly off, but finally we were on our way. We stayed two nights at Swansboro, waiting out some chilly, drizzly, foggy days. We also had had a new fuel hose shipped to Swansboro and installed that there. Then we made our way to Southport, NC, close to the Cape Fear inlet, on December 17.

We finally made it to Oriental, NC on December 5. We spent some time with our friends, fellow Baba- owners, Joe and Priscilla Brant. While we were there, another cold front with strong winds was predicted to come through, and Joe found a slip for us to hole up in and wait it out. It turned out to be the coldest weather yet this year, with two days of lows in the 20s, breaking records around the area. We were very grateful to have heat and stay put in this wonderful spot, with a lounge area that looked like a mountain lodge.

On December 3, we left Belhaven bound for Oriental, NC. After a bouncy ride across Pamlico Sound, we entered the canal. By the time we crossed the canal into the Neuse River, the skies were looking gray and the wind had come up. We turned around and spent two nights at the R E Mayo shrimp boat dock, alongside commercial shrimp boats. We waited out the cold front in this protected spot and had a delightful dose of local color from the off-season fish company. Accomodations were a bit dilapidated, and I avoided the ladies' room pictured below.

We left Elizabeth City on November 29, and crossed the Albemarle Sound on a beautiful calm day. We anchored in a peaceful bend on the Alligator River. There we noticed diesel fuel in our engine pan (again!). We had to limp back to the Alligator River Marina and contact AYB again. After some prodding, and calling Yanmar directly, they did send down a mechanic to look at the engine. A pin hole leak in a high-pressure fuel line was found, and he could jury-rig it up to work. We left the marina after a cold front went through the area on December 2.

On November 26 and 27, we motored through the Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia and North Carolina. There wasn't anything dismal at all about it, on sunny, calm days, after a bit of fog in the morning. We tied up at the Visitor Center for the night, and made it to Elizabeth City, NC on November 27, where we stayed for two days.

At Atlantic Yacht Basin in Ches- apeake, we had a new bow roller installed, our engine checked over once again for any leaks, and a new stainless plate through- bolted for strength. A small yard worker had to get into our anchor locker through the V-berth (our bedroom!) all the way forward, and work had to be done on the bow of the boat. We ended up with a much better system that we think will withstand much greater stresses.

We also got strong three-fourths inch nylon three-strand line, and learned how to splice a steel thimble eye into it. We added a stainless shackle and chain hook for a heavy-duty snubbing line, to be used with the chain at anchor.

We left Chesapeake on November 26, headed for the Dismal Swamp Canal.

On Saturday, November 11, we sailed back to Norfolk. Larry had gotten the engine working again, and we had a very nice south-west breeze to sail back with. The sun was setting as we spotted the entrance buoys to the inlet, and we motored the long way back in the inlet in the dark. The weather forecast was for south and east winds of 20-25 knots after midnight into the next day, so we anchored in the south-east corner of Willoughby Bay to get protection from the winds forecast. We dropped anchor just before midnight, let out 90 feet of anchor chain, and battened everything down for a breezy night.

The wind, when it came up, was instead from the northwest, blowing directly across the bay, allowing the waves to build. By mid-morning it was a full gale of 35-40 knots, blowing sheets of rain across us. Our anchor was holding well, but it was a wild ride. It did not start subsiding until Monday morning, when the wind was down to about 15-20 knots, with a steel-gray sky. We decided to pull up our anchor and get going down to the boatyard.

The force of the wind and water on the anchor was hard to describe; in hindsight, we should have waited one more day for the wind to die down before moving. Using the engine to help motor up to the anchor, and our windlass, Larry tried to get the anchor up. The bow roller that guides the anchor chain started to flex as the chain came in, something we had never seen before. Finally the roller twisted into the shape pictured above. Larry also got his hand caught between the chain and the post, crushing a finger, even as careful as he could be. Things just happen very quickly when the wind is blowing. He could have lost a finger very easily. The anchor wouldn't come up, when we came to the end of the chain; it was solidly set and wouldn't budge.

At that point we were in a real predicament. The roller was compromised and could shear off at any moment; the bow of the boat was bucking like a bronco; and we knew if the roller came off, the anchor chain would start to take out the bow of the boat. We could lose the boat quite easily. We tried to hail TowBoat/US on the VHF radio, but they didn't answer. Neither did anyone else. So, we used the ham radio to contact Maritime Radio 14300 KHz, who saved the day. They contacted TowBoat/US for us and put us in a patch via the radio to them. It turns out they were on another emergency call and couldn't get to us for over 2 hours. So we braced the bow as well as we could and waited. Finally, the motion of the boat broke the anchor free, and we carefully raised it and lashed the anchor in the twisted roller.

We held our breath with every rolling wave that washed over us and motored down to Great Bridge. In the morning, the boatyard was extremely accomodating, cleaning up the diesel in our bilge, and even replacing our bow roller. We also had their machine shop put a steel plate to reinforce the bow roller.

Things could have been much worse, as we read up on bow rollers and their vulnerabilities and importance in an anchoring system. We got several good lessons in safety at very little cost.