Greetings from St. Pete, Fl. This message is being forwarded to you from our son, Jim, who is acting as our Postmaster for these broadcast messages. The distribution list is getting longer and with the connection problems we’re having with email it’s getting hard just to get the email list transmitted. PLEASE CONTINUE TO SEND EMAIL DIRECTLY TO US AT wcw5564@sailmail.com.
Okay, now for our new plans. We’re going to leave St. Pete around the 2nd week of Feb. and head to Sarasota and Venice, then jump offshore to The Dry Tortugas. From there we’ll sail to The Keys and then cross the Gulf Stream to The Bahamas. We hope to have a leisurely cruise down The Exumas and eventually get down to The Virgin Islands. It sure is great not having a schedule or even having to stick to our own plans.
We’ll keep you updated as we are able to get connected.
David and Claudia
We finally made it to Clearwater, Fl (Woo-hoo!). We left Apalach 
early Monday morning and had an incredible offshore sail for the next 28 hours. It’s shorts and tee shirts weather again…what a relief. We’re gonna stay in this area awhile in order to take care of some maintenance items on the boat and decide where we’ll go next. We’ll let you know when we figure it out!
David and Claudia
We finally got to venture out offshore. Last night, while you slept, we motor-sailed about 100 nm from Pensacola to Port St. Joe. We’re currently anchored in a quite lovely swamp halfway between Port St. Joe and Apalachicola. We’ll get to Apalach tomorrow and wait for another weather window for our next leg to Clearwater. All systems are working wonderfully well; what a change from a few weeks ago! More later.
David and Claudia
1/7/99 1840 EST
Update:
We’re in Apalachicola waiting for cold front to pass thru this weekend. Email getting difficult to get connected.
1/9/99 0645 EST
We can see Florida from here but it’s cold, COLD, COLD! We spent almost a week at Fowl River Marina near Mobile. It was only $7.50 a 
night (going rate has been about $22) and we got to spend a little time with 2 grandkids and their mother, watch the fireworks and wait out the cold front and associated severe weather. The weather never got bad where we were…just a little rain one day and then COLD. We decided to leave today for our jumping off point where we’ll wait for a good weather window to head offshore for Port St. Joe, Fl. With the wind out of the north we might have been left land-locked in that marina until the tide was allowed back in. We had planned to anchor in Ingram Bayou but with the temp. dropping into the mid to low twenties, we opted for another marina for at least tonight. The spray from the rough chop on Mobile Bay turned to ice on the toerail, deck and dingy this morning; a sight and experience that we wish never to repeat! Couldn’t get connected to email for the past few days…some kinda interference at the marina, but I hope to get this one out tonight.
Later,
David and Claudia
a historical sailing adventure
Travels of Ma'alahi 