220 miles, 51 hours, 7 pounds of pudding and 1 engine failure later...

All on a few hours of sleep non-the-less. We are back. Failure or success? you might ask. True we ended where we sarted, not 5500 miles away. True we cut the duration by 6 weeks. But I say success. I consider us sailors now, we know the seas, we know the equipment and we know the life. We learned about every lesson that is possible for sailboat cruisers.

Our return: Not to much to say, lots of ocean, very little sleep. We caught a few more fish, mostly baracuda, which seemed to be the only thing we could catch on this trip, but we also hit a school of dolphin (the fish, not the mammal, a.k.a. mahi-mahi) and were able to pull in 3 before we lost them. Good eatin. After the 140 mile first leg we took a few hour stop in Fort Pierce, Florida, then gassed up and went out for another 80 mile leg to the marina we started at. We initially planned on going up to Jacksonville, another 250 miles, but we so tired. On the last leg we finally hit a storm on the water, in the dark. Mostly strong winds, not much rain, about 10 foot seas. It was pretty fun. We started of motor-sailing, running with the jibb out and the motor still going. Unfortunately this changed the angle of the gas in the tank allowing another mass of air to enter our fuel line, thus killing our engine again. However, this time we knew how to fix it and we (alex rather, i watched the storm) had it running in about 30 minutes. After this little ordeal we had an amazing feast for our eyes for a couple hours to follow. In one direction was one of the most voracious lightening storms I have ever seen. Behind us was a spectacular rising orange moon. And streching the entire coast were at least a dozen fireworks shows. The later was the coolest being that we were so far off the coast that the fireworks looked like little explosions on the horizon since much of the time we could only see the top half of the firework explosions. We pulled in to the final channel at about 2:00 am and stealthly snuck up to a fuel dock at a marina and tied down for a few hours to get a little rest. We had to stop there to wait for the draw bridges and lock that we had to go through to resume operation. We finally we got up aout 5:00 and made it to our final tie-down after a brief stop at another marina for breakfast. We caught a ride from Alex's uncle again for the 130 mile-or-so trip to Jacksonville were they dropped me at the airport, which is where I am now. I should be arriving in Atlanta in just enough time to catch the end of a 4th of July party, luggage in hand.

What have we learned: We learned how to sail. We learned how not to sail. We learned how to break and fix diesel engines. We learned how to navigate shallow waters. We learned that sailing isn't as easy as we expected. We learned that getting to the destination can be the hardest part of sailing. We learned that the destination can be the best part of sailing. We learned that the other sailors you meet are among the friendliest and most hospitibal people around. We learned how to live without the comforts of modern society. We learned how to spearfish. I learned how to read again. Alex learned about the philosophies of the Tao (pronounced "dow") and Zen. I learned that I am the Tao without ever knowing it, sortof, and if you want to get in my head, read a book on it. I learned about Special and General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, Cosmology, Astrophysics and the history and future of the universe, by reading 3 books on it. We learned that 2 people can't eat 7 pounds of pudding. We learned there are several things we didn't miss about how that we thought we might. We learned that there are many thing about home we do miss.

Final Poker Score: Stupid Alex 27, Me 23... weak

This is Nick, and Alex, signing off. Over and out.

Last Pics:
A happy dead fish.
Me and our buddy Katsia who was really worried when she found out what we were doing.
7 Pounds of pudding.
Pudding Boy.Baracuda Boy.
1 Dolphin (mahi-mahi).
2 Dolphins (mahi-mahi).
Moonart.
Moonart too.

Living in a Corona commercial..

Well, we did it, we found our deserted islands. Today is the 26th, I'm not sure what day we headed out or what weekday it is. There is no need for keeping time out here. Ok, I peeked and the computer said its Saturday, I would have guessed maybe like Thursday or something. I guess I have a little recapping to do, and thus far nothing bad to report. The day we left the sees weren't too bad and we motored all the way down to an anchorage called Slaughter Harbor in between Great Stirrup Cay and Little Stirrup Cay. We pulled in at about 6 o'clock after the 11 hour crossing. The water looked nice so we did some snorkeling and found all kinds of interesting things in the shallow grassy sand below. There's a picture at the bottom of the stuff I picked up on that dive.

Deserted Island #1, Little Stirrup Cay: There's a catch to this islands desertion, it's only deserted at night when the Royal Carribean cruise line ships aren't anchored of its coast. It turns out that this place is sort of a private island for the cruisers to play on. Nobody was there when we first pulled up, but when we woke up it was crawling with tourists. So we made the 1/2 mile swim over and took advantage of the nice shaded beach chairs, female bodies, and wonderful free lunch. One of the best meals we'ld had in a while.

Speaking of free meals, I forgot to mention that the night before we left Ocean Reef, the resort had a welcome party for the new batch of guests that had just been trucked in for the week, including another free meal. Aside from the meal they were doing a lot of social activities, one of which was sexiest male contest. They pulled some guys out of the audience and a few women to judge. Bare in mind that this is not a young crowd resort, so all of the contestants were old, mostly hefty, men, as well as the women judges. Of course Alex and I were forced into the contest, though I was able to weasel my way out. However, Alex wasn't as fortunate, and damn I wish I had had my camera. He got so freak on the old ladies, flossing the shirt between his legs, spanking his ass, etc. It was damn hilarious, and of course he won, getting us a free bottle of Cocunut Rum which we will probably not drink.

Now back to the deserted islands.

Deserted Island #2, Hoffman's Cay: Still not 100% deserted, but much closer. On the way here we did some good fishing, catching various fish including a rather large Baracuda. This island is much bigger than the first, including a nice long beach near where we anchored. It also had better snorkeling and plenty of fish for me to spear. There's nothing more primal and satisfying than spearing a fish. I pulled in 5 on the first dive. I think we spent two nights total anchored here. The reason I say this one isn't 100% deserted is because of the man-made gazeebo on the beach and the other people who pulled up on it while we were there.

Deserted Island #3, Bond's Cay, as in where they filmed part of a James Bond movie: Closest to complete desertion yet. Only thing holding this one back is the boats visible on the horizen and some trash left by the previous temporary inhabitants. This one is my favorite thus far, very exotic beaches, great snorkeling and a couple nice trees for me to put my hammock under. Today is our first full day here, we pulled up yesterday afternoon. After we got the anchor down we did some more snorkeling where we had our second shark encounter. This time i was carrying a bleeding fish I had just speared, so when I looked over my shoulder and saw him needless to say I got a little scared. It was probably about 5 feet and pretty fat, scary enough to make me drop the fish and climb up on the tiny rock island we were snorkeling around. Once I got out of the water, slicing up my hands on the razorblade-esque rock, I yelled at Alex who saw it and informed me it was only a Nurse Shark. I wasn't to sure of that, but I got back in got my fish and continued swimming around with now me and the fish bleeding. Didn't see the shark again, but to let you know, we've heard stories and seen pictures of 15 foot Tiger sharks (aggressive like the Great White) and 18 foot Hammerheads in the Bahamas. Today I spent most of the morning in my Hammock reading and watching the lizards do their little mating dance. Until we saw a snake try to eat one of the lizards I though that the lizards were the only animals, besides birds, to inhabit these islands.

That pretty much catches us up to today. The poker game has taken a rather disturbing and drastic turn, putting Alex on top with a score 21 to 16. Damnit. The mood is much improved, but we are still going to head home soon. We should be close by the time I get to post this. Its strange though. We have spent the week at arguably some of the most exotic beaches, and to ourselves on the most part, but its not as a satisfying feeling as one might expect. The view we've had from morning to night is undescribable, and million pictures could do it no justice. We have nothing to worry about and nowhere we have to be, and yet I still don't find my mind at ease. Maybe its just too much to take in, maybe I've spoiled myself with all of the other exotic places around the world I've been too, maybe its that I know I eventually have to leave, or maybe its that humans aren't built to be perfectly content, which kind of makes sense because be absultely content would probably be the same as absolutely bored. Anywho, we're ready to come home, not because of showers, cold drinks, air-conditioning, my car, a bed that doesn't have a ceiling and 3 walls, food that doesn't come in a can, but I think mostly because of the people, or maybe because we're broke. Back to the snorkeling.

TODAY:
So on that snorkeling trip I finally pulled in a lobster, and we had him eatin in no more than 15 minutes after I caught him. A later dive the next day I was able to pull a nice Grey Snapper and another pretty fish, but a baracuda ate the pretty fish while we hunted a couple sharks we saw swimming around while we rowed back to the boat. The next day we made it down to one more Island called Chub Cay, not desrted, but with a marina. Not to much there exceptr extreme prices and heat so we headed back the next day.

So we made it back to the Oceen Reef Marina after our week on desrted islands. It was good and we managed to cover 120 miles in two days on our return trip, not too bad. We are kindof on our way home now, but I was able to pull another 320$ from the casino last night so I might try to convince Alex to go back down to Nassau to meet the Bainbridge girls. It would be about a 200 mile trip, but we could probably do it in 3 days. If that doesn't fly than we should be home maybe this weekend, or at least to Florida. I have my first hangover in a month, so I'm gonna shutup and let you look at some pics.

A serious dude. Me.
Me and the sunset.
Sunset and no me.
Alex Playing with his dingy. Yeh... real funny.
Alex cleaning my Grey Snapper. Cuz he's my bitch like Clay said.
Deserted Island #3 Pics:
My bonfire on the beach.
One view.
ANother view.
The view from my hammock.
The view from my hammock looking the other way.
The view of my hammock.
The snake that tried to eat the lizard.
The lizard that didn't get eatin by the snake.
We figured out how to hang out over the water while we're sailing with a strong enough wind to put the top of the mast over the water:
Me.
Alex.
Deserted Island #2 pics:
A lounge lizard.
Another lounge lizard.
5 fish I speared.
A view of the island.
Another view.
Looking out at the Blue Sky.
Some more fish:
A baracude I caught. Seems to be all we catch.
Alex and a soon to be dead fish.
A needle fish I pulled in. Ugly bastard.
Desrted Island #1 Pics:
A view.
Some things i picked up during the first snorkel dive.
Us leaving the morning to make the trip to our islands:
The sunrise.
Captain Alex.
Captain Nick.

Shoven off...

It looks we might get to leave this place tommorow. Not gonna say for sure though. You'll know if it happened by a lack of posts. We'll either stay in the Berries for a while and come home through Bimini, in which case you won't here from us until Bimini, or we will make the trip down to Nassau and Paradise Island first and you would here from us there. Probably at least a week or maybe more before either of those places.

As soon as I write it it changes...

We fixed the engine problem, just air in the fuel line, which we knew, but there was one step in not listed in the manual for bleeding it out that we had to learn from a couple of old salts. As for what we do tommorow, I'm not gonna try to say, but if I don't post for a while, we're probably out on the high seas, or at our island. I do know we hope to make it down to Nassau and Atlantis on Paradise Island by July 4th. We did a couple hours of snorkeling today and I finally got to use my homemade Hiwaiian sling, which is spear you shoot like a slingshot, and after about a million misses I got one. The best part was it wasn't the fish I was aiming at. Check him out, he's a whopper.

Fuc*ing Dam*it Sh*t

No more predections. No more telling you where we WILL be going. Only after the facts from now on. In other words, we lost our engine now. Rather, its not lost, just broken. We won't be leaving this marina anytime soon unless its on a plane. Who would have thought paradise could be such a bitch.

Nice people...

Well i pretty much begged alex to stay, giving him my whole list of reasons, and either it worked or he changed his own mind. Jim the guy in the boat beside us had a sewing machine, and some older lady whose name I did not catch who used to be a seamstress got our sail back into shape. This all happened while i walked all over downtown Freeport looking for some spare gas filters for our trip. Didn't find any but i got to walk 6 miles in the sun and almost adopted a cat from the humane society. We spent the rest of the day hanging with Jim and Debbie the lady on the boat beside us who is also stuck here with her own boat problems. She is actually from Atlanta too and has a bed and breakfast in inman park, I think its called Sweet Magnolia's. We ended up spending 3 nights here total and now we're off to our deserted island again. Maybe we'll make it this time. Blue Sky over and out.

Figures... Comedy of errors continues... the last straw? defeat? see you in a week?

Well we had our best day of sailing yet today. Strong steady winds, not quite the direction we wanted, but good enough. Big seas, 5-6 feet for some good bow pounding excitement. A nice heel around 30-40 degrees continuous. A few showers to cool us down. But what's that you say? Why am I back on the net and not on some deserted island? Well its because 25 miles into the trip to the Berry Islands our sail rips in half. Doesn't that sound exciting! Damnit.

The next day:
Well this did give me a chance to give a hundred bucks back to the casino. The sea dog in the slip next to us has a sewing machine we can use to fix the sail, but this may have been the straw that breaks Alex's back. He is ready to come home and I have spent the morning trying to convince him to stay just one more week so we can do the deserted island thing. We are so close and have suffered too much with too little payback. To me this would make it all worth it. As for those of you hoping to come meet us, I hate to say it it, but its not looking good for yah. It would take divine intervention at this point to make us last longer than another week or two. So pray damnit. I don't want to come home. :)

Pics of the good sailing:

Poundin through the waves.
One more.
Standin sideways.
Sleepin sideways.

More pics.. start posting comments on stuff while we're gone for the next couple weeks so we know whats going on when we get back to civilization...

So start chatting it up on this post. And look at these...

Port Lucaya Beach to the East.
Port Lucaya Beach to the West.
Some drink that tastes like plain bubblegum.
Blue Sky at the Ocean Reef Yacht Club & Marina.

Better...

Ok, in the last few hours since the last post we have gotten our stuff together and actually have a game plan that will probably help us stay out here a little longer. We're gonna make a cut down to the Berry Islands (Still the bahamas) and spend a good while down there. Our ultimate plan is to hold out for as long as we can on a deserted island, which there are plenty of. After that we'll be heading back to florida, hopefully not until august. Finally found a cheap place to stay the night actually has free water and electricity and cable if we had a TV. And theres a free wireless internet connection, versus the 20$ i have been paying. However after tommorow, it really will be a long time before we see the internet again. Since thats the case I'm gonna put up a post where everybody can just start putting comments up about whats going on back home, bets as to how long we will make it and just general chat between everybody so that when we do get another chance to check it we will have a lot to read. It is kinda lonely on the boat afterall. I'll also put up a couple more pics before we go.

Well..

So we got another chance to hit up some Bahama computers today. Nothing as exciting as the coast guard since the last post. We are still at Grand Bahama Island, now on our second marina, Port Lucaya Beach Resort & Marina to be exact. Pretty nice place, bigger and better than our first marina here, Xanadu, which sounded like it would be cool. It had a nice beach though, but not where I'ld want to stay if I came to the Bahamas. I did also get a chance to catch a couple of episodes of Dawson's Creek in their workout room. Pacey just kissed Joey. After the night at Xanadu we spent the day out on the water sailing, fishing and snorkeling. The sailing was good for a change. Caught one fish that we kept and plan to eat, see pics below. The snorkeling was good, a nice reef, but unbeknownst to me I dropped my diving knife, which I guess really isnt a diving knife since it rusts, on the way back into the boat. Then after realizing this a couple hours later we went back to where we thought it was and I actually found it on the bottom. I paid 20 bucks for that thing. After our fun, we decided we had to go to a marina again for the night because there was nowhere safe to anchor within reach. So that how we are where we are now. Theres a bunch of nice shops and a casino here. We had dinner on the patio at Dominoes and the strangest thing happened. This song came on over the loudspeakers, that knew cha-cha dance song, and everybody just dropped what they were doing and started dancing out in the walkways between the shops... Everybody!. Weird, but most were drunken teenage girls getting off a booze cruise though. We hit the casino, played some video poker, blackjack and carribean stud and I actually walked away with about 200 bucks... amazing. Alex made 5 bucks. Now its morning, we're gonna go stock up on groceries and water and figure out where the hell we are gonna go from here. There is nothing good and close and cheap... We'ld like to get down to the Exumas and hold out the rest of the summer on a deserted Island.. but thats another 200 miles away and we only make about 30-50 a day. SO it looks like we might have to do another couple all nighters, or we might just except defeat and come home... I hope not though...

The Blue Sky parked at Xanadu Beach Resort & Marina
The Beach at Xanadu
Blue Sky dwarfing the other boats at Port Lucaya
The shark sucker we caught
The Little Fish we caught and plan to eat (1 of 2)
Lil' Fish 2

Oh yeh, here's some pics...

My bed on the boat.
A King Mackeral we caught.
The kitchen, dining room, living room, guest beds, main lobby and closet in our boat, then looking through the door into the master bedroom.
Looking back at the Florida Coast from the Atlantic.

Now read the post under this one.

Tonight’s dinner: fried Spam slices and Wheat Thins (low sodium)… a surprisingly delectable duo…

A have a lot of catching up to do on this post. We have been on the go, more-or-less, for almost a full week now (at least at the time I’m writing this, I won’t be able to post it for a few days or so). The rate at which we have been learning very important lessons has been phenomenal, or at least it started that way and has tapered off slowly. To give an example let me list the lessons we learned on the first day, or leg really, of our trip.

1. Plan ahead. Don’t just leave saying that you’ll stop where the winds take you. We learned this when pulling into an inlet we hoped to stay in for the night and only then realizing the Blue Sky was to big to get under the bridge. Before you go, pick and final destination, particularly one that is attainable. When sailing down the Atlantic Coast, there aren’t exactly any comfortable places to park for the night without going into an inlet, harbor, etc. If you anchor near the shore you get pounded by waves all night long; not fun, especially if you have been fighting sea-sickness the whole time (Alex).

2. Before having the Coast Guard come rescue your ass, check the connections on the battery. And yes, we had the Coast Guard out hunting for us the first night. What happened was, soon after realizing we couldn’t get in the first inlet we hoped for we had to turn the engine off for a second because I dropped a funnel down into the engine well. Then, upon attempting to restart the engine, we decide that the power drain problem that we thought we had finally got the best off us, being that the engine wouldn’t even turn over after the first couple tries. We couldn’t use the sails because there was no wind (the reason we were running the engine in the first place). So there we sat dead in the water, or so we thought, drifting toward shore with lightening storms on all sides. We inform Alex’s dad of the predicament and he calls the coast guard. We eventually get an anchor down and sit there for an hour and a half listening to the Coast Guard put out the equivalent of an all-points-bulletin for us every so often on the distress channel of our VHF radio. When they finally find us, we talk for a bit and they decide to come on board to check things out. 5 minutes later, after Allen the coast-guardsman tightens the wing nut on the battery we are off. Embarrassing. Also, apparently all coast-guardsmen refer to each other and everyone else as ‘Bubba’. Gets to be confusing really.

3. Sailing through the night sucks. After our lame rescue we had another 25 miles to go for a safe anchoring. That took us until about 7:30 the next morning. We took shifts, but to our dismay the sleeping person was interrupted every 30 minutes by the coast guard on the radio checking on our progress.

4. Make sure the jib lines aren’t hanging off the boat. (The jib lines are the ropes that control the front sail, or jib.) Once in the inlet, and after the sun had risen, we ended up getting one of the jib lines stuck in the propeller. This icing on the cake was not what either of us in very grumpy moods needed, but all it took was a quick anchoring and dive under the boat.

5. Buy charts for where you are going. It took us another two hours to find a place to anchor once in the inlet, because we didn’t know the depths of the area and had to go around real slow looking for a good spot.

And that was all on the first night. After that we slept for about 3 hours and headed south again. The next day went much better and we made it to a very nice anchoring for the night without much trouble. We slept for a good 11 hours and woke up not a second to late to see that our anchor had come loose and we were within feet off running into a dock and the shore. If we had literally been 5 seconds later getting up we would have been really screwed. Strange that the anchor held for 11 hours then decided to give, but we witched to a larger anchor shortly there after. Lesson number 6 I suppose.

The next also day wasn’t too terrible despite bad winds, Alex’s sea-sickness and a broken toilet that left a non-too-pleasant odor for us to enjoy. At this point moral was dangerously low, and the fate of the rest of the trip was in serious jeopardy. If Alex would have said screw it, which he almost did, I would have said right on. We had been working our asses off for several days, fighting opposing winds and currents, making hardly any ground. It sucked, but then along comes West Palm Beach which included Alex’s dad, a Marina to stay in versus anchoring, good food, calm waters, other people besides me and Alex, and the first shower in 4 days. Damn that shower was nice. We are still in West Palm Beach, this being our fourth night. The first night was in anchor, as well as tonight, but the middle two were at the marina. We spent one full day at the marina finishing a final list of repairs, including the toilet, and today we spent anchored off the coast, snorkeling, reading, and basically chilling. We even got to swim with a 4 and a half foot shark for a while, though it wasn’t planned that way. It did give me a chance to seriously confront one of my strongest phobias, and I came out with all of my limbs intact.

Tomorrow, or tonight rather at 3 A.M. we depart for the Bahamas where things should finally become enjoyable. But first a few more side notes:

We have pulled in two fish so far, a nice sized King Mackeral and a shark-sucker, one ugly bastard.

I am still Captain by way of the poker games and the overall score right now is me 9, Alex 7.

I learned to read. I actually read a 350 page book in 4 days, which is actually my second book of the trip… for pleasure non-the-less! Who would have thunk-it. Its cool though. Books are a lot like T.V. minus the commercials, which is great.

No serious sunburns so far, only minor ones, and a large assortment of bruises, scrapes and missing chunks of flesh. This sailing business is hard work.

As far as L.A., yeh fucking right. As far as Panama, it would take the Gods of wind, currents and luck all getting really drunk and screwing up big time. As far as us even leaving the Caribbean aside from coming home, not likely at this point. So get a week off and come meet us.

New Updates Since I Wrote This:
Poker Score: Me 10, Alex 7
Correction: The winds during that first storm were 60 to 80 not 45 to 60. It was a freak.

We leave now...

So we finally fixed everything except the head (marine speak for toilet) but thats good enough so we leave for Miami tommorow with a layover in Fort Pierce..

Gale force winds are rated at 40 to 75 mph...

We are on the boat now and have been for about three days, though still at the starting point. Yesterday we took the boat out for a little while just do some work and relax for a bit, not checking the weather report, because... well it was sunny and clear. On the way in after a couple hours we saw a little thunderstorm in the distance, and with only about a half a mile to go we noticed that it had caught us. No biggy we thought, just a little rain and a lot of lighting. Wrong... As we pull into the slip, and before we can tie down, the storm shows its real face. We got repeatedly slammed into the boat beside us while using all of our strength to try to tie her down. This battle lasted a good ten minutes, as the rain hit our skin like nails. A few times I wasn't sure if we were to make it without heavy damage, but somehow we pulled it off. We did get a nice amout of water in the cabin because of an open porthole and Bret, our faithful shouffer and Alex's uncle, had his glasses thrown off of his face and into the water behind him. A couple good things did result from the chaos though. The light on my phone hasn't worked since the last storm it weathered, but now it works again. I bought a brand new pillow to replace the old piece of crap one I brought that is now thoroughly soaked. And Bret, while proclaiming, "I'll never be able to find my glasses," puts his hand down on the first try and picks them up. By the way, the storm had sustained 40 mph winds with gusts in the 60s. It ripped the roof off of one of the marina buildings, tore down some fences and knocked down a telephone pole. It was totally badass. For those of you who worry about us, it's probably good we already experienced a storm of this scale, because its likely we won't see many more like it.

Anywho, we're still working through repairs and its likely that it will be at least 2 or 3 more days before we shove off.

Cubans and thongs..

Today is the day we make it to the boat. We had to stop at Amelia Island and spend Memorial Day on the beach, just to get a little vacation before this 3 month vacation starts. It looks like we will be heading to Miami on our first leg of the trip come Thursday, assuming we can finish all of the repairs by then. We are shooting to be there by Saturday.

We suck...

Hey the plans have changed yet again... We don't leave 'til Sunday the 30th now. How are we going to make it to LA if we can't even make it to the boat? I'll tell you how, we are bad dudes and thats all it takes.

The fine line between genius and insanity...

Less than a week to go now, and the mess continues. The flight to Miami, throwin it in the trash. The boat is in Port Canaveral (next to NASA), so thats where we will start. We spent two days down on the boat this past weekend. We worked through an extensive list of repairs and took her out on our maiden voyage. She moved with great agility and power and now it is up to us to match her in these traits. To correct the previous post, we don't have a Hunter 34, we have a 1980 Hunter 33. And now for a couple pics from the past weekend.

The Blue Sky.
A Manatee hangin out by the boat.

The sign of things to come...

So I'm (as in Nick) like, "Oh sweet, a ticket to Miami for 90 bucks, ill go ahead and get it for the 29th." And then he's (as in Alex) like, "Oh sweet, but I won't be there until the 30th or 31st, plus the boats in Daytona, not Miami." So yes, the trip has still yet to start, but we (Nick) have already managed to screw up. So now I get to spend one night, maybe two at a quaint little hostel on South Beach with 3 other random people, waiting for Alex to sail the boat down from Daytona. Check it out here. Really though, this is nothing more than a communication error. Once we become bound to the 34' by whatever dimensions of our boat, communications, or at least the act of communicating with each other, should become slightly more frequent. Speaking of the boat, if anybody wants to know more about the type of boat we're on, it's a Hunter 34'. Some information and pictures about this type of boat can be seen here. Our boat is named Blue Sky.

And it begins...

Ok, so it doesn't really begin until May 29th.