Steve and Laura's Excellent Adventure

Greetings from Long Island, Bahamas! Steve and I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on a two-day sail from the Dominican Republic to the Bahamas.  Although this was an unconventional way to spend the holiday, we decided it made sense since most places were closed during the holidays anyway and we would be on the boat in any case.  We left for Mayaguana - one of the "out" islands of the Bahamas. We had very light winds and calm seas, and pretty much had the whole ocean to ourselves for two days.   We had a waning gibbous moon for our two nights of sailing that was not visible for most of the night, which made for a gorgeous canopy of stars. When we named "Starry Night", we imagined being anchored and lying up top and star-gazing.  What we've found, though, is that we spend a lot of time looking at the stars during our night sails.  (Eventually I'd like to learn about celestial navigation, but we'll stick to GPS for now). Now that I'm looking at the

 Dear friends and loved-ones, We've spent the last couple of days here in the Dominican Republic and definitely want to come back when we can spend more time.  The island is lush and beautiful, the people warm and welcoming, and the accommodations spectacular and reasonably priced. We stayed in a marina which is co-located with a 5 star hotel and enjoyed multiple pools, restaurants, a gym and all the other amenities associated a resort.  View overlooking the marina  Steve and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas! 

Hola, mi amigos! Steve and I arrived in Cabo Rojo safely on Saturday after a nice 24 hour sail.  This was our first down-wind sail, and once again we learned a lot.  It was a fairly easy sail though and we had another dusk visit with the wake-surfing dolphins again so I was a happy girl :-) The picture below is an early morning shot as we were approaching the southwestern corner of Puerto Rico. Although the photo doesn't do the scene justice, it was breathtaking to see the El Dorado-esque cliffs of gold blazing in the morning sun. We've really enjoyed the tiny fishing village of Cabo Rojo and the Puerto Rican culture. Everyone has been so polite and helpful, and as with most Latin cultures, there is always music, color and laughter.  The Christmas holidays are especially festive! Enjoying the local catch of the day at Don Ico's Tomorrow, we'll continue our onward journey with our next stop in Samana', Dominican Republic, where we're hoping to spot humpback whale

Five days goes quickly and our time in the US Virgin Islands is drawing to a close. While many of the natural features of the islands here are similar to other places we have visited, it is quite interesting how different each island's culture is. The feel of the USVI is quite American and most of the people we ran across were American tourists like us which, for me, was disappointing since the thing I enjoyed most about our time in Grenada - and in St. Lucia to some extent - was getting to know the locals and understanding their country's culture a bit. We spent our first days moored in Cruz Bay in St. John, where most of the island and surrounding water is a National Park. We had expected that St. John would be the quieter of the two islands we were visiting, but that was not the case.  It's definitely a hard-partying place! While we did visit the beaches there, our favorite parts of St. John were the hiking and snorkeling.  Surprisingly, we found a hermit crab on  our hi

  Since my last post, Steve and I have covered many miles (we've now logged a total 678 nautical miles) and completed several more overnight sails - including one 48 hour sail. Laura & Steve's Journey to Date We left St. Lucia on Tuesday at around noon and set sail for Guadeloupe. The sail was more like we had envisioned and was really pleasant. We each were able to sleep several hours, the weather was perfect and the stars were absolutely amazing...the sky looked like a star map out of a book. We arrived at 1 pm on Wednesday, right on schedule according to our plan. View of Guadeloupe from Starry Night Unfortunately, the anchorage options in Guadeloupe weren't good, due to the fact that the depth of the water drops drastically very close to shore and the optimal anchorages were already taken. We've also had relatively poor luck in getting a response from marina dock masters, and although we might have been able to get a berth or a mooring ball, we once again got

Since my last post, Steve and I managed to jump through all of the necessary hoops to enter St. Lucia: show COVID vax and  negative test results at the port health office, cleared customs, cleared immigration, paid entry fees to St. Lucia and checked-in at the Rodney Bay Marina.  All told, it took almost a full day.  It was worth it though!  St. Lucia is gorgeous.  We spent a couple of days enjoying the physical beauty, as well as some of the historical sites, and also spent time out and about in the day-to-day world of St. Lucia where we enjoyed some of the local cuisine. One interesting find was green banana salad, which was offered as a side to fresh caught tuna at one of the street-side food vendors. As it so happens, green banana salad tastes very much like potato salad! The other tasty treat we tried was fresh-baked cassava bread. Gluten free and delicious! Here are some of the highlights: Scenic Overlook of the Soufriere and the Pitons Fishing Village of Canaries Governor's

 Greetings from St. Lucia! WE MADE IT!!! Twenty-seven hours after departing Grenada, we enter Rodney Bay.  Dinner overlooking the Rodney Bay Marina The forecast looked perfect:  winds out of the east, max 20 knots, average 16 knots; seas 3-5 feet.   The morning of departure, we saw the winds had shifted so that the sail would be upwind rather than the comfortable beam reach we were expecting, but seas and winds were still in the expected range so we thought, "worst case, we motor-sail if necessary" The winds were predicted to drop dramatically as the day wore on so we went further off-shore than planned to try to maximize the winds for sailing.  The first part of the sail was uneventful and the winds dropped as predicted.  We talked about taking the reef out of the mainsail (to make the sail area larger), but wanted to be conservative in case we had any 20 knot gusts, so we left the reef in.   Then we ran into the first squall.  We could see it in the distance and it's pa