Relaxing ....

Jeff coming to play with us.

Jon snorkeling

the catch of the day

Nice place to swim

Lots of hiding places

Lion fish-they get killed first thing.

Just waiting..............

This week has been very busy with all sorts of things.

First off: Jon flew back to New York to settle any last minute things and to totally remove our stuff from our RV that was at the marina we use to work at. He has been away since Friday.
Next, Sarah had to have more surgery to remove some very ugly spots and bumps off of her body. She is now recovering. I am still waiting for my test result to come back to find out if I have the okay to leave next week for the Bahamas.
When we first got here Jon landed jobs instantly to work on boats and motors. One of which he has already completed, he fixed an old Evinrude motor for a nice Canadian couple Don and Sue. He made enough for us to have a very nice dinner one night, drinks included. When he returns from New York he has arranged to install and work on some new gauges and electronics for Chris and Louise, who are also from Canada. He decided to decline on any of the other work for now, or we will never make it to the Bahamas.














 The weather here has been very warm and sunny, and the water in the morning is very calm. Almost every morning there have been dolphins swimming next to the boat. 

an afternoon storm

I can't wait for Jon to show back up so we can get on with our adventures!

Great harbour Cay, Berry Islands

Finally we made it to our first and maybe only stop in the Bahamas this year. We love it here in Great Harbour Cay and feel it's like our home out of the country. We may stay around the Berry's and do some exploring which most people miss because they are so into getting farther south.
Amy and Jeremy will be flying in on the 31st of this month, so we will be here for that and  hope for some really nice weather while their here.

Looking for leak (Note the bloody right arm and can you feel the heat)

The crossing took place on the 31 instead of the 30th because once we got out the inlet at Lake Worth, Jon realized we had antifreeze leaking from somewhere, so we shut down the engine and drifted backwards even though we had our sails up for about an hour to try to find the problem with no luck.
At that point we made the decision to head back to Lake Worth and anchor the night while trying to find the problem. If he couldn't find it we would head back to Stuart and make a plan from there. Jon pulled all sorts of things apart and at about 7pm he realized that two bolts on the thermostat housing were loose. A much simpler problem than thought.

eating MRE's just before dark (Thanks Amy) YUK

We gathered our thoughts at that point, and then called our Friends Bud and Jill whom were in Lake Worth to see what way they were heading in the morning. They were heading to West End, so we would just meet them in GHC.
We ended up getting up before dawn to dingy ashore and let the dogs go pee and off once again out the channel. This time all the way over to GHC a total of 27 hours.

All tethered in and taking a nap
 Note the 1st sun rise of 2012 in front of us

We did have one causality which was just before dark of course, the AIS stopped working or rather it had a malfunction and could only let us know when ships were within a few miles of us and this doesn't help me much because I try to keep ships away by more miles than that, so when one shows up its too late. I find its always something that's broke when owning a boat............BOAT; you know the acronym!





Jon's morning catch but someone caught him too and tried to bite his tail off



Marina manatee coming to say hi

Bud and Jill arriving to sit with us before their crew show up in Nassau

Anyhow now we are in GHC and our friends are right next to us in Paradise.

We are in Lake Worth

We are in Lake Worth and will head out in the morning for the Bahamas. Keep an eye out on the "spot" in the morning for about twenty-four hours to see our crossing. If we start to head too far north you might want to do us a favor and call the Coast Guard after a day or so :). My worst fear is always the Cargo ships, because at night they are so much harder to tell how close they are. There are always a few of them showing up on our AIS and Radar at any time.

We are heading to Great Harbour Cay in the Berries and have decided to do some exploring there since we only stayed there last year while the engine was being repaired. GHC Marina is a great place to check in and if you look around there is a lot to do but you really need to explore and ask where to go to see the really cool stuff.

After that we may head back to Florida to do some cruising in the southern part of the state.
We really don't know and don't care this year so it will be exciting just to see where we end up.

Happy New Years to all and will write when we get to GHC.

We are back in the States

It seems like we do a lot of things on the spur of the moment lately, so this is nothing new. We woke up on Monday morning and got a report that Whale Cut was passable so we decided to get up and move right then. The cut was a little bumpy but nothing that we have not been through before however coming back in the north side looked a little scary with huge breakers that a surfer would be in their glory over. We had to time it and pick our cut and just go for it(no problem and a little exciting at that). We made our way up to a place called Spanish Cay which you have to take a slip and it’s not cheap, but we decided to go for it because everyone always talks about how nice it is. This island is very different from the other places we had pulled into. One thing is there is no one there. The only people that live there full time are the two that work the marina. We had enough time to walk the beaches and do a little exploring with the dogs. There was one bay we went to that there were hundreds of conchs all over the place and when we would pick them up they would come halfway out of their shell and it looked as if they were looking at us. We left there and our original plans were to anchor at Great Sale Cay and then go to the West End to wait for weather. A front was coming in on Thursday night so we did not know if we could cross anytime soon. On the way over to Great Sale another boat called to ask if anyone was doing the cross that night. Jon and I talked about it and then decided to go for it. As we passed Great Sale we looked for a beach and made our way over to it to let the dogs go potty and put the dink on the topside of Kasidah. It was amazing how many Portuguese man a war jelly fish we encountered this part of the trip. We left Great Sale at 6PM and had 10 hours of motoring in the calmest weather we had seen in the Abacos. We went off the bank at around 2AM and made Ft Pierce Fl. Around noon. The sea conditions were not bad at all, maybe 2 to 5 and a light roll. The autopilot worked great all the time and the stars and moon were absolutely beautiful. We only encountered three ships, one cruise ship and two very large cargo ships that made their way around our stern. One really cool thing I noticed at night was when I would pump water in the head fast there would be phosphorus things running in the bowl.
We are doing some cleaning on Kasidah right now and then will head up to Green Cove Springs where Kasidah will be hauled out and stored for a few months till our next adventure begins.