We officially made it to the tropics yesterday when we crossed the Tropic of Cancer at 23 degrees, 30 minutes latitude. We’re currently anchored at Mayaguana, Bahamas, waiting for the 20-25 knot trade winds to subside and/or back enough to allow us to make it on down to Provo, Turks and Caicos, 45 miles to the SE. From there, we’ll cross the Caicos banks and then its only 80 miles to Luperon, Dominican Republic. We spent 12 days in George Town, exploring several different anchorages with our friends from Houston, Mike and Cynthia, who flew down to stay with us for a week. We’ve hooked up with another cruising boat from our marina in Houston, “Sunrise”, with Bob and Susan aboard. They’re heading to the same places we are and with a very similar time table, so we’re traveling together for now. After leaving George Town April 2, we had a nice motor-sail over to Conception Island, an unbelievably beautiful, uninhabited, travel-brochure-quality island with the requisite deserted, white-powdery-sand beaches, clear, clear turquoise water and great snorkeling reefs. We spent 3 days hanging out there in very settled weather and then decided to move on down 20 miles to Rum Cay. As we neared Rum Cay, the wind and seas were so cooperative that we decided to take full advantage of the light NE winds and continue on to Mayaguana, 142 miles further to the east and south (the direction of the normal wind conditions). During the night the winds picked up just enough to, get this, actually turn off the engine and sail with just the sail-thingies (a very rare event). Along the way, we caught a wahoo, caught and released a barracuda and caught and lost 3 progressively larger dolphins (mahi mahi). The wahoo is big enough for 3 meals (we’re having the first tonight) but it will be time to replenish some fishing tackle when we get to a provisioning port. Claudia is making the required courtesy flags for each of the countries we’re visiting. She got her sewing machine out the other day to start work on Turks and Caicos and discovered that it had been soaked by salt water, probably the day we were beating down to George Town and the forward hatch had been slightly ajar. Anyway, it appears to be a total loss; the motor and mechanisms have turned to solid rust. She finished the T & C flag today sewing it all by hand. We’ll definitely be looking for a replacement machine! For anyone with access to a Ham or SSB radio, we’re checking in on a cruiser’s net at 0830 EDT nearly every morning. The frequency is 8152.0. They cover a very large area from Texas to New England, the Bahamas, NW Caribbean and E Caribbean, making good use of relays, so if you check in there’s a good chance we’ll make contact.

Well, the wahoo is done and so am I.

David and Claudia