We Made It!

We're at Cat Cay Marina in the Bahamas! ... finally. It was a lovely sunny day crossing of 9 hours with 2-4 foot seas rolling us along. We saw the whale that we were supposed to see in Maine and saw the coolest flying fish. They're little guys about 6 inches that break the water and fly for 5-10 seconds, then dive in again. Very cool to watch. Tomorrow on to the Berry Islands.

Bahamas Bound

The stabilizers are fixed and we're crossing tomorrow (Saturday). Leaving Biscayne Bay at 6:00 a.m. Should be about a 9 hour trip. Wish us luck. We kissed sister Joyce goodbye today after a scrumptious lunch at a swank Indian restaurant. Did our last provisioning yesterday and today- Lynnie and Vicki walked 5 miles to different places to get various odds and ends - good exercise after being at anchor for a while. We'll update the blog when we have WIFI in the Bahamas - not sure how frequently that will be. It's an adventure! Yee-haa!

The Last Straw

After serious soul searching, we regret to inform you that we have decided to sell Tide Hiker. The maintenance is just too expensive and frustrating. This breakdown when we were starting to cross to the Bahamas was the last straw. We've been planning for the Bahamas and looking forward to the trip for so long - and WHAM! another breakdown. Our reservoir of resilience has been used up.


APRIL FOOL!!!! Come on -- we're not a couple of namby-pambies who quit when the going gets tough. We don't fold when the chips are down. We take the punch and come back swinging. (Enough bad analogies?) We're hearty midwesterners, remember?? We're in Coconut Grove at Dinner Key Marina to get Tide Hiker fixed up and then we're making tracks for the Bahamas. The stabilizer guy will be here tomorrow afternoon and it looks like there's a good weather window shaping up for this weekend, so we're crossing our fingers that it all comes together.

False Start

This morning at 7:00 we started crossing the Gulf Stream bound for the Bahamas and we were back at Key Biscayne by 10:00. Our crossings must be jinxed - no kidding. Remember the aborted crossing to Nova Scotia when the engine overheated? Nothing so dramatic this time. We lost stabilizer oil pressure, had to turn the stabilizers off and were rolling pretty uncomfortably in 3-4 foot swells. We decided to turn around, repair the stabilizers and try again another day.

We feel badly for Rick and Lynnie. They turned Rickshaw around and came back with us to wait again in Hurricane Harbor.

At the moment, Norm is waiting for the engine room to cool down from 100 degrees and then he'll figure out what the problem is and what we need to do about it. More news then.