Bahamas Bound

1.4.11

Greetings faithful blog followers! We left Marathon New Year's Day and made it to the back of Long Key where we anchored for two nights and worked on a few small things around the boat. The anchorage was great and protected us from the East winds. The winds ended up being lighted than anticipated and the current actually affected the direction the boat was facing more than the wind!
After a perfect day of sailing today, albeit light winds, we have finally made it to Rodriguez Key, which is a small island used as a "jumping off" point for Bimini. We have carefully tracked the weather and will be leaving tomorrow afternoon and traveling through the night to get to Bimini by Thursday morning!!
We are both excited and nervous to be making our first Gulf Stream crossing, but the winds should be light and with luck, the seas as well! We have met several boats along the way who are also making the crossing, and although we won't be going at the same time, we have plans to link up with them in Bimini. We are realizing that the sailing world is small - we are starting to recognize other boats and other boaters are starting to recognize us! It is really cool to pull into an anchorage with a few other boats and hear one of them hailing you on the VHF because you had been in a previous place together.
Funny side note story - while in Marathon, we met another young couple and when we told them what boat we were on, they said, "Oh, everyone knows your story!" Brad and I looked at each other trying to figure out what our story was and why everyone knew it!?! I finally asked him what he was talking about and he told me that everyone in the mooring field was saying that we had gone to Las Vegas and won big in poker - hence the boat and its name! HA! Who knew we were so famous!?!
Anyway, we are very excited to be making the crossing and even more excited to think that this time on Thursday we will be sipping sundowners in Bimini!!