Vagrant Sea Heads South

Part 2

Vagrant Sea arrived, safe and sound, in Nassau on Christmas Eve!

We're in Key Biscayne, in an anchorage full of boats wanting to get to the Bahamas. Earlier in the week, we had really strong winds and were pretty happy to be in such a sheltered spot. The winds have died down, but now we are waiting for the swells to subside and for the wind direction to become more favourable. We are lucky to be in the company of some experienced crossers, all of whom are being very careful to wait until things are nice and safe. We listen to NOAA marine radio all the time, plus we get the famous Herb Heidelberg on HAM each afternoon as he gives his offshore forecasts to sailors all over the Caribbean and North Atlantic. He's an amazing guy - he does this without pay.

Thank you all for keeping in touch with us as we have travelled down the east coast. You can hardly imagine how excited we are when we collect our e-mail. We squabble to see who gets to read it first and tease each other with little tidbits of news.

I know we've mentioned this to most of you, but we are very doubtful about being able to e-mail from the Bahamas. I've called Compuserve but got no sense out of them at all. I did have contact last year with other cruisers who used Compuserve from the Bahamas, but it was erratic and very expensive. So, for right now, we will ask you to hold off sending messages - unless, of course you have some really important news or really juicy gossip. During Christmas we will be calling both families and we will ask someone who has the reply-to-all-addressees feature (and who has kept this message; hint,hint) to send a short note to let you know what is happening. PLEASE, help keep our costs down by not including our old message with your new one. And whatever you do, don't send electronic Christmas cards or web pages or other graphics. Some of these files are so large that the system times itself out and shuts down, so we not only don't get the picture, we cannot get any other messages.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's and anything else you are celebrating. We have our tree up and our stockings ready and I'm sure in the right light we can imagine the white sand is snow.

Read the next part
 

Fair winds and snug harbours,
Bonnie James - Vagrant Sea  email

Bonnie James and Jim Miller sailed their Newfoundland-registered Victoire yacht Vagrant Sea from the Queen City Yacht Club in Toronto via the ICW to the Bahamas. They are now back in Newfoundland where they operate the Sea School of Newfoundland  

Other articles by Bonnie and Jim

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